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"

I moaned a bit about DS not even getting a first stage interview for his preferred job and a woke acquaintance went into a riff about needing to compensate for the evils of colonialism. I did not say anything as I don't think she would have understood but sat there thinking of DS' ancestors in Co.Mayo turning in their graves. They did not do a lot of colonising and indeed were probably very lucky not to have been hauled off to Iceland as slaves a millennium ago. Perhaps the Icelandic Embassy would commit to a weekly portion of cod and chips as reparations.

DH, who is a Civil Servant told me a while ago that there was some evidence that EDI training tended to just harden attitudes. I don't know where that was from but can believe it. As a manager who at the time had responsibility for a couple of young Bangladeshi-origin young women, he wanted training into how best to support them. They were bright, intelligent, hard working and at times quite assertive. At the same time there was something that was holding them back from forging good careers. A friend who was an organisational psychologist suggested that some women have never spent a night away from home except with their families so felt unable to access residential training courses or visit regional offices. Who knows. We used to care, but now it all seems to be about the rainbow lanyards.

Yeah I misread that and you have a very good point with that.

It's a bullshit saying, used to justify racial discrimination.

You are still missing the point - it's evident wher you say, "I'm not saying it's laudatory to discriminate against a specific group,,,"

You have said, very clearly, that in a (clearly fake) choice between two equal candidates, it is laudatory to discriminate against a specific, real, white man, on the basis of his race.

That is the exact flip of choosing the white man over a black man, or a woman, on the basis of race or sex. In each case, you are specifically choosing to deny employment on the basis of race.

The relation between the actual individual person, and their "group" membership, is the same in every case.

This is why KB keeps trying to emphasise that the law on this is not just protecting members of certain groups, it's everyone who has these characteristics, at the individual level.

What you are esposing is deeply racist and will only lead to more deep racism.

But they do. Women out of university do as well or better than men in terms of opportunities.

This is why you need to actually look at real data broken down. You aren't even asking the right questions.

Eliminating bias in recruitment is an entirely admirable objective and will naturally result in a more representative workplace in whatever sector. It will certainly disadvantage overrepresented groups (white men in the RAF, for instance) while this is in progress. Personally I think a meritocratic recruitment policy is better provided underrepresented groups are given equal access to that recruitment process. That in itself needs positive discrimination, perhaps, but that's a different thing.

Kemi cannot have it both ways and as she isn't stupid, is no doubt playing to her Conservative Party mostly white male audience.

The military is an odd example though. Professional violence is something more usually associated with men of whatever colour.

Two things I'd say about this:

All that you say about DEI in a UK setting is true, but it doesn't really work in an American setting either. There are many many people in the US who are white and deeply underprivileged. There is also a pretty decent sized black middle class whose advantages are very much those of the white middle class, and aren't in anything like the same position of poor blacks or whites. This is increasingly complicated as well by new immigration of people who are not white but also not part of the historic American black population. Their outcomes are quite differernt as a group.

The other thing is, as far as the elites - yes, they do have a large representation of white privately educated males. That being said, I am not sure they care at all about maintaining any kind of racial purity, in my experience they are generally happy to accept the wealthy elite of any ethnic background or religion. There is some insider/outsider feeling, but it's not so much about ethnicity but shared experience.

But it demonstrates we are over simplifying issues with current diversity training.

The problem with simplistic theories is that it prevents you from analysing and properly identifying the problem. It might even prevent you from identifying the objectives. Insecurity about language especially perhaps because people might be conceabpit being labelled racist, transphobic or homophobic can then prevent a constructive discussion about possible solutions.

In two examples I gave above, what might benefit Latinx students in a objective presumably of helping them get good satisfying jobs and progressing economically. Good teaching. Possibly other things like access to childcare, coaching in written English whatever. Employing staff from the same background might help but may not be a priority.

Ditto Bangladeshi girls from East London. Helping both them and their managers understand what is holding them back should help both, and the organisation. However this might involve some potentially tricky discussion of different cultural expectations. If EDI training has taught managers anything it is to steer well away from any look at cultural differences.

Isn't "Latinx" actually offensive?

Yes, it absolutely does.

I don't really think it can be remedied, the basis for it is simply incoherent and not reality based.

I also have some pretty serious questions about whether most of it is appropriate for employers to be foisting on their employees. If they think their employees need to behave differently at work that's one thing, but I don't think employers have any business telling their worker how to think about society, politics, or anything else.

Yeah, most Latinos in the US don't use it and think it's stupid. It's mainly used by progressive white people, especially in universities.

So dumb rather than offensive.

I remember the blow out online years ago so wondered what happened at the end.
"Local white saviour" thing?

When you said there are objective measures of it.

I didn’t say that though.

It sounds like you are saying we should train women to have more of the same "skills" (blagging, risk taking etc) as men.

But the research shows that women demonstrate those attributes they are penalised for them, because its seen as unlikeable in women.

So we then either 1) accept women won't do as well or 2) train people to recognise their biases and accept womens skills. Which is back to diversity training.

You are misunderstanding what I said.
There is currently a bias towards white men. If that's reduced and we move to a meritocracy, then there will be a proportion of white men who would have got the job under the biased system, but won't under a meritocratic system. They are "taking the hit" of a move to true meritocracy.

Those men are likely to feel penalised because they have it "worse" than their fathers and older male colleagues.

OK. You are arguing with what you think I wrote, rather than what I actually wrote. The only person who is using the word "laudatory" is you.

Anyway as you rightly point out it's extremely unlikely that you would have two equally qualified candidates so really not worth splitting hairs over.

Oh. Is that because I'm not coming up with the right answer for Tempest's world view?
What would be the "right questions" in your opinion?

If EDI training has taught managers anything it is to steer well away from any look at cultural differences.

This is just not true. Sometimes I feel like FWR posters live on a different planet, or maybe lots of people have just been our of the workplace for a while.

There is loads done on talking about cultural differences. In fact that's the bedrock of most EDI training - don't assume and how to talk about stuff sensitively.

My company and my partners company (majority white, historically very white) are both making an effort to celebrate Ramadan with Muslim colleagues to share culture.

I don't know what people are envisaging "EDI" courses to be but it seems quite far away from anything I've experienced.

A poster upthread mentioned "critical race theory" - never ever heard that in a UK work context. That's a US thing and it just goes to show how much the US agenda is infiltrating conversations here.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/23/uk-critical-race-theory-trump-conservatives-structural-inequality

🤔

So we should keep doing EDI training cos to do different makes girls 'undesirable'?

The argument should be, 'what are employers looking for?' It could be different things from different groups - but its about playing to strengths still. It could be talking to employers about what women (or another group) might have to offer thats of value to them.

Yvon Chouinard is the owner of the Patagonia brand and has written a fair amount about the value of female employees - they might seem 'more expensive' on the face of it in terms of having to allow for maternity pay. However he argues that because women value job stability (because of child rearing) its worth taking the hit on that and providing on site childcare where possible because women tend to jump from job to job much less. They are loyal employees. He points out the costs of the recruitment process and how disruptive it is to a company and if you invest that money in staff instead, you can retain good staff rather than scratching around constantly trying to find good staff.

I think there's merit in completely reframing things - instead of trying to get women to fit into roles within a framework that suits men and then trying to convince employees they should think a certain way, the emphasis should be about changing the framework of work which makes it better for a variety of different needs of employees. This could include changing your training in different ways and understanding that a one size fits all might not get the best out of all employees.

Instead we are all about the identity of employees rather than trying to get the best out of employees and realising that its beneficial to see employees as individuals rather than trying to force them into a sausage factory of thinking where they behave like robots and are fearful of saying the wrong things.

I find the whole thing about EDI is about trying to create 'an ideal employee' for the company. Thats the thing that really wrong headed and it leads to resentment.

But building a workforce and identifying how an individualised approach might mean your team has more to offer requires more time and investment in people skills. Something that isn't liked by power hungry managers...

Undesirable?

Are you actually in work at the moment and what kind of EDI training does your company run?

the emphasis should be about changing the framework of work which makes it better for a variety of different needs of employees. This could include changing your training in different ways and understanding that a one size fits all might not get the best out of all employees. This is exactly what managers are getting told on leadership courses.

realising that its beneficial to see employees as individuals rather than trying to force them into a sausage factory of thinking where they behave like robots and this is exactly what EDI "training" is. It isn't training people to be sausages in a factory. It's training people to recognise and challenge their own assumptions, and be able to talk about difficult subjects sensitively.

I'd love to know what on earth you think happens on EDI courses

I absolutely agree with Kemi. She's pretty spot on about most things.

Which skills are not acceptable in us? Are you talkimg hard skills or soft skills like assertiveness?
I am not British I had assertiveness training to actually learn the middle ground to be assertive without sounding like Inwant to ounch the person (apparently) in UK😂