Kemi Badenoch: Diversity policies should not "come at the expense of white men"

[AdamRyan]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1879473/kemi-badenoch-diversity-white-men/amp

https://www.independent.co.uk/business/kemi-badenoch-diversity-initiatives-can-be-ineffective-and-counterproductive-b2515403.html

Two links with different headlines but the gist is the same.

White men are disproportionately represented in a number of organisations (including the RAF which Badenoch highlighted). Any activity that increases representation of any other groups including women is necessarily therefore going to come at the expense of white men.

I know KB is anti-woke but I hadn't realised she was also anti-feminist. I cannot get my head round this statement at all. It's all a bit "people, know your place"

Obviously not what you would say though. You'd just go "sorry Dave, it was close but on this occasion Sarah's a better fit for what we need".

And again, I'm not very sympathetic to Dave, given all the years of "hmm, Sarah is the best candidate but she's just got married so will probably need mat leave, Dave's a safer option", "Sarah's got children so will need time off if they are ill, Dave's a safer option" etc ad nauseum.

Dave has no more right to a job than Sarah. And the reality is most employers seem to disproportionately find the "Dave's" of the world to be better candidates for most competitive jobs, suggesting your hypothetical scenario really isn't very likely at all.

What attrobute would that be if they are of equal merit. Practical attribute a team needs?
While I fully agree we need to address equality of opportunity I am an immigrant woman and I don't want to be collected like a pokemon card into team because they are missing an "immigrant" or "woman" ones and need EDI points. I want to be collected on skills cards. If that makes sense.

Sorry Dave feed your family and pay your mortgage with your white male privilege. Sarah having children should be neither here nor there, OH was our main child carer and took time off when I was seriously ill. Being male or female you both face the risks of illness.

Sex shouldn't count just roll a dice or toss a coin give them an equal chance.

Yeah of course, I don't want to be hired just for being a woman either. But if I applied for a job and they said I'd been equal with a male candidate but they gave me the job because they wanted more women on the team I would be pleased they were thinking about diversity and having a range of people on the team. Having a diverse team brings benefits and its much easier as a woman to be in a team with at least some other women so I'd be pleased to be working somewhere that recognised that.

Just my opinion though.

Sarah might have to pay the mortgage and feed the family too! Thats not a reason to prefer Dave

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Missions/18707/Equality-versus-Equity-What-s-the-difference-as-we-EmbraceEquity-for-IWD-2023-and-beyond

Men have had the advantage of that being the default for years, maybe they can take a small hit for a bit to redress the balance.

I think this is quite a dangerous way of looking at things. It's like the Ibram X Kendi idea that present racial discrimination is the remedy for past racial discrimination. It's basically still racism but dressed up as "anti-racism". The danger is when does it stop? Who decides when white men have taken enough of a "hit" that we can go back to treating people according to the content of their character and their ability and qualification to carry out a role.
Personally I don't think we will ever be able to deal with racism by implementing more racism.

So should young men just entering the workforce accept discrimination because older white men had an advantage? That doesn't seem terribly fair.

If we want to make things more equal then yes, white men have to take the hit. There is no other way to bring equality.

It would only be racism if white people became disproportionately negatively affected e.g. there was a lower proportion than expected of white people getting jobs.

No danger of that just now.

Really depends what she means by “come at the expense of”. If she just means white men shouldn’t be discriminated against, great. If she means that institutions employing and promoting disproportionate numbers of white men should be able to carry on doing that, no. She has a habit of motte-and-bailey-ing this stuff to appeal to the right- saying B then claiming she only meant A.

I can see where you're going with this but in the Dave example, Dave didn't choose to be born a white male any more than anyone chooses those things. What if he's a single dad to a disabled child, surely that gives him marginalised kudos but they would be invisible to the employer (btw I disagree with the idea of some kind of marginalisation hierarchy).

The patriarchy manifests in systems and attitudes and it's those which need changing rather than literal white males being punished as individuals.

I've just finished a book called Cynical Theories which I think you'd enjoy @AdamRyan I didn't agree with everything in there (especially some of the authors' views on feminism!) but it explains some of the issues with critical theories and why they might seem like "Social Justice" but actually end up being causing damage and division overall. If you do read it I'd be interested in your thoughts!

You are advocating for people to be discriminated against on the basis of the colour of their skin.

That is racist.

Out of interest how “white” do you think a person should be before they should “take the hit”?

I'll have a look!

Nope, I'm saying if you have two job candidates who are equal in all other respects, and you can't decide on experience and competence, then choosing a candidate because they help your organisation become more diverse is fine.
If there was an organisation that was majority Asian and they wanted to be more diverse then they could equally choose to recruit white people. That is not "racism".

It literally is.

Also like I said I don't agree with the concept of "privilege". That sounds like something you've earned and noone can control the life they are born into.

I think some groups are disadvantaged in some ways and we should try to compensate for that. For example someone who grew up in Hartlepool has many more barriers to opportunity than someone who grew up in Winchester regardless of ethnicity and gender.

I wish the Tories had followed through on "levelling up", apart from polluting teesside

It's a bit like Oxbridge trying to redress the balance of private school kids who are massively over represented in their colleges.
White men are massively over represented. People hire people that look and sound like them or people around them.
White men are still going to be massively over represented in top jobs so they needed worry.

No it isn't.
Racism is assuming people are intrinsically deserve to be in a lower social position on the basis of race. Noone thinks white people should be treated worse. At worst they think if we had equality white men would lose out. Which is patently true, but then again white men aren't the "chosen ones" who deserve better opportunities than anyone else.

Noone thinks white people should be treated worse.

You do. You’ve stated in this thread that you think white men should take the hit to make up for previous discrimination. That’s treating them worse isn’t it?

My son, with his various burdens and baggage, presents as a white male from a middle class home with two uni educated parents.

He’s actually doing incredibly well, despite some ACE.

I’m not sure he should be overlooked in favour of my friend’s daughter, or another friend’s son.

If we don’t address this correctly, we’ll promulgate the generation of angry white working class boys and their fathers. We’ll also be trapped in a situation where if there is a continuing unaddressed reason for their over representation, they will be forever discriminated against. It’s been a while since we’ve noticed that working class white boys are doing worst of all the groups in education. We don’t seem to have sorted that out yet.

We’ve known girls do better at school than boys since my teacher training 40years ago.

There are two issues there that we’ve failed to address- boys doing badly, AND girls still not succeeding despite their performance in education.

Discrimination is not the way to address it.

If you've really a truly done an open and fair recruitment process (including things like name blind applications, scoring with moderation and weighting, tested the demands of the job with similar scoring and discussion and moderation, and had at least three people of different backgrounds on the interview panel etc) and then emerge with two people suited exactly the same and you cannot choose...well...I don't believe it.

If that really happened then the reality is that something went wrong and no one wants to admit it. That EQA provision was always viewed as so unlikely IRL that most people looked faintly bemused by it and went on with their day.

Well I guess it depend on what you mean by "worse"
I think in order for the job market to become more equal, white men will get fewer of the high paid, influential jobs and so yes, they will be in a "worse" position than they are now. That is necessary, I think I said that on p1 as a reason why the headline annoyed me.

"Worse" could also mean that white men are performing disproportionately badly in accessing high paid, influential jobs. We are very far off that and no-one wants to see that form of "worse". That is not equality.

In the context you are advocating for, “worse” means that individual white men would be treated less favourably due to their skin colour. It really is that simple.

At the moment white men are treated better due to a combination of their skin colour and their sex. You are equally advocating for that to remain the case.

No skin off my nose to disagree, it is what it is. The fact is that if we want to give equal opportunities, then some white men will do less well in future. It comes down basically to how relaxed one is about men continuing to dominate at the expense of women.