h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got some leaflets from the job centre yesterday.

Looking through the leaflets I noticed that for every white person represented there is a person from an ethnic minority - approximate percentage 50/50.

Sure, it would be racist to have nobody represented from ethnic minorities but a 50/50 ratio? This doesn't reflect the ratio in society at all! Shouldn't I be waving and shouting the racist card to claim that my ethnic group isn't being accurately represented?

I guess that depends on the ratio of people they get enquiring at the job centre for jobs? It may well be 50/50. Then again it may be more like the 97%/3% or whatever it is nationally.
Of course, in some areas it will be more 3%/97%. Local demogrpahics and all.
In the proverbial ideal world the statistics would show that 100% of jobs went to the person best suited / qualified for the job and race/sex would not come into it. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed , this is not a perfect world. I guess it is there to mollify those who think statistics prove the equality of the job centre system. As if pictures in a leaflet are any reflection of reality!

I suppose it's some sort of consolation: people of ethnic minorities, you are less likely to be offered a job than an equally qualified white person, but as compensation, we have over represented you on this leaflet!



Better than nothing I suppose.

sprout

Looking on the bright side, you could cut the leaflet up, stick the pictures to a card backing, and make a recycled chess set.

I used to get a lot of booklets like that in school, presumably so that, if we had forgotten how people of different races differ physically irrespective of what their personalities are like, we could be reminded, and if it didn't normally occur to us to worry about people's racial background, race could be burnt into our consciousnesses.

Actually, that possibly wasn't the intention...

I do think that sometimes the professed intended message of "we are all equal" actually becomes "look, these people are completely different from us but we must treat them as equals cos that's the right thing to do" in some readings. The old proverbs about horses to water comes to mind.

The annoying thing about this (or many cases political correctness) is that you can almost hear the person responsible saying "Oooh, look how politically correct I'm being!"

If either race appeared to be over or under represented, there would be people who moaned about it. Now that they put a 50/50 ratio in there to cover their backs and avert the pointless complaining...people are complaining

"people of ethnic minorities, you are less likely to be offered a job than an equally qualified white person, but as compensation, we have over represented you on this leaflet!"

Is that so? I am seriously considering putting that I am 'Black' on my future application forms just to ensure I get a chance of an interview. I can always say 'Ooops, ticked the wrong box, sorry,' when I get there.

complaining? No, criticising. There is a difference.
Which I see no problem with at all because as far as I can see the current system is far from perfect.

The only to please everyone on this issue would be to remove all pictures. And if that ever happens, I feel it would be going too far.

Any other ideas?

oh for f*cks sake. Any white person living in an Anglicised country who thinks that there is no need for general 'equal opportunities' action has their head in the sand.

Re the 50% thing - If that pisses you off (as a white person) maybe take some time to imagine what it would feel like to be marginalised all the time, across the board (not just in job centre pamphlets). People of other ethnicities have had to deal with being made invisible for decades.

>>Looking through the leaflets I noticed that for every white person represented there is a person from an ethnic minority - approximate percentage 50/50.<<

What I would be very interested to know is what other 'misrepresentations' you see in the media in general? I'm willing to bet that the ones most visible to you are those of your own race, gender and class.


Yes, it may seem like political correctness gone mad, but the only reason that is happening is because you live in a society that is still fundamentally racist.

"oh for f*cks sake. Any white person living in an Anglicised country who thinks that there is no need for general 'equal opportunities' action has their head in the sand."

Yes, thanks for that. I'll be sure to remove it


"Yes, it may seem like political correctness gone mad, but the only reason that is happening is because you live in a society that is still fundamentally racist."

I really don't see how?(from a white perspective)

Creachy

It definitely is so - I don't know if you remember a series that ran a good few years back, based in Bristol, where one black bloke and one white bloke sent equally qualified CVs for the same jobs, looked for flats etc. Even having an address from a black area of Bristol was enough to see the CV hit the bin in some cases. Things might have changed a little bit, but not that much.

For every organisation that is trying to redress the balance, you have another two where the managers think people from ethnic minorities are lazy, won't fit in with the team etc.

Sad but true.

sprout

I never saw that program, no.

"For every organisation that is trying to redress the balance, you have another two where the managers think people from ethnic minorities are lazy, won't fit in with the team etc."

And do you have proof?

I'd say the proof is in the fact that we still need some form of equal opportunities programme. If there was no racism, there would be no need for monitoring of equal opportunity stats.

My point was that, as regards moving towards a society that is _not_ 'fundamentally racist' (leaving aside the questions I, as a Philosophy student, naturally ask about what it means for 'society' to be 'fundamentally racist'), I think it's reasonable to question whether this practice is the appropriate approach.

Of course we spot misrepresentations of that with which we are familiar; I, for example, am better placed than many other people to determine whether or not a media representation of Durham students is accurate, simply because, as a student living in Durham, I have the requisite -- and first-hand -- knowledge.

I wouldn't mind at all not seeing pictures in leaflets of Ordinary People, of any race, with whom I am presumably supposed to identify; however, I don't think I'd want their absence to be made a requirement. Neither do I think regulations governing the ratio of whites to non-whites that can be depicted in official leaflets would be a good idea; quite apart from the 'Nanny State' problem, I think it is reasonable to worry that 'equal opportunities' action that deals purely with the surface _effects_ of racism (a) will not be an effective solution, and (b) may in fact be counter-productive insofar as it keeps race forcibly in one's mind. Now, I should in fact be very happy to learn that, in fact, this is not so, and these policies are genuinely working; but we cannot address the question at all if as soon as we begin to discuss it we are told simply that 'any white person living in an Anglicised country who thinks that there is no need for general "equal opportunities" action has their head in the sand'.

Well said

The things getting up my nose at the moment are things such as the Met saying they will pay extra attention to applications from ethnic minorities.
I find that a round-a-bout way of sugar coating that white applicants won't be taken anywhere near as serious as black applicants, which quite frankly, I find an unfair and racist stance to be up against.
I'm all for the recruiment drive to get more ethnic minorities involved in the Police force, but comments that seemingly alienate the white population 'must' be counter-productive.

I fear that one day soon, employers will be employing people not because of their qualification, but because the colour of their skin aids in getting 'Government Advised' ethnic ratios in the workplace.

'I'd say the proof is in the fact that we still need some form of equal opportunities programme. If there was no racism, there would be no need for monitoring of equal opportunity stats.'

Isn't this circular? Equal opportunities programmes and stat monitoring come about because of a perceived need for them (i.e. to oppose racism). So while you can use the stats as evidence indicating how much racism there is, asserting that racism must exist because the belief that it does has led to the setting up of these programmes looks logically questionable; you're justifying the belief by the existence of its outcome. (Not that that makes the conclusion that there is racism false.)

>>>
"Yes, it may seem like political correctness gone mad, but the only reason that is happening is because you live in a society that is still fundamentally racist."

I really don't see how?(from a white perspective )
<<<

The reasons that initiatives like "equal opportunties" were introducedin the first place is because the inherent racism in society meant that some groups of people were unfairly disadvantaged by not being white.

As these initiatives grew several things happened. One is that there was an eventual backlash against them by parts of the white population. Where this happened in the media, the initiatives were often portrayed extremely, or isolated examples of stupidity were taken to be representative of all initiatives.

I also think that white people involved often were expected to work with initiatives that they supported in principle but didn't have the skills to really understand as they were so disconnected from other ethnic realities. I suspect that white guilt and the need to make ammends also has distorted initiatives sometimes mainly because no-one is talking about the guilt and need to make ammends.

So, as people try to address racism, and there is a backlash against that, the issues get complicated and sometimes distorted. That's my theory about the current perception of some political correctness gone mad.



Unless of course your question was contesting that we live in racist societies?

"I think it is reasonable to worry that 'equal opportunities' action that deals purely with the surface _effects_ of racism (a) will not be an effective solution, and (b) may in fact be counter-productive insofar as it keeps race forcibly in one's mind"
Said so much better than my deleted attempts (guess that's why you are the philosophy student and not me!).
At the root of this though there has to be an acceptance of how the human mind works. It is not the categorisation of people as belonging to a particular large group that is the problem. It is what is done with that information that needs to change. Such things can give important information that can actually help relationships and interaction. unfortunately the quality of information that a particular person may have gleaned about a particular group is not and cannot be quality assured.
(and, I'm sorry but I feel I have to say this, the point about white people in an anglicised society would have been better put in more general terms. Racism is neither a white nor an anglicised nation specific problem.)

RFJS_, yes it does seem circular within the confines of the current society and world view (not sure of the right words here, paradigm? summats like that anyway) . But if, for a moment, we can imagine a world where the issue of racism does not exist then the need for the monitoring would not have arisen. No one would give it a second thought. So the fact that we have it means we do not exist within a world such as that just imagined.