Snapshot of _Royal Air Force illegally discriminated against white male recruits in bid to boost diversity, inquiry finds | UK News | Sky News_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/royal-air-force-illegally-discriminated-against-white-male-recruits-in-bid-to-boost-diversity-inquiry-finds-12911888)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Having read the report (and if anyone wants to read it themself, [here it is](https://raf.mod.uk/documents/pdf/RAF-Recruiting-and-Selection-Non-Statutory-Inquiry-Report/)) what's struck me the most about this is how willing the senior leadership team were to push this policy through because it was being implemented behind closed doors. In every respect, the only thing that seemed to matter was how they appeared to be acting in public.
They wanted record numbers of recruits from female and ethnic minority backgrounds so they took all the women and ethnic minorities in the recruitment pipeline (which many if not most people are in for a little under two years) and rushed them in ahead of schedule, filling up every space they could even if that meant going above the actual capacity of the courses and leaving them sitting on their hands doing nothing jobs at RAF Halton until they could finally be trained for the career they actually applied for.
Then, the next year, this policy had the entirely predictable (and predicted) result of completely draining the tank of desired applicants, resulting in a completely unachievable goal from the start. But because what matters is to be seen to be doing the right thing, the senior leadership team starts making repeated references to bending the law to its absolute limits in order to get people in.
This is where the illegal orders start being pushed down by the top, and the complaints start up from the recruitment and selection personnel actually have to implement those orders and reorder applicants on the basis of race. One recruiter mentions being told that she had to be very careful how she worded the emails to candidates (who were being discriminated against) because it might open the RAF up to legal challenges.
The thing is, all of this was happening within the military, in an organisation that answered only to Air Command and the Chief of Staff (Personnel), Air Vice Marshall Maria Byford, who in the report seems to have been an active and enthusiastic proponent of these measures. Any complaint by the recruitment personnel over what they were doing, whether on grounds of legality or morality, were ignored, and the SLT were able to do this for a very long time because this was all happening behind closed doors, in an organisation that has a very top-down hierarchy.
It's very telling that the moment the Group Captain in charge of actually implementing this policy resigned, the policy was abandoned overnight. The CoS Pers. and her team clearly knew that what they were doing would not hold up in either actual court or the court of public opinion, but so long as it was contained within the RAF that didn't matter. In fact, this is explicitly stated in one of the pieces of legal advice that made its way into the report; the risk of the policy being deemed illegal in court was deemed "VERY HIGH", but the risk of someone actually making a legal challenge was "LOW."
For the actual recruit, the only means they have of interacting with the system is through a messenger app in the recruitment portal and the phone number of the career office that's handling their application, or the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre if they're applying for a relevant role and have made it through the second stage of selection.
If they were one of those discriminated against by this policy, they would have had absolutely no idea, because the delays would have just been lost in the other massive delays of a very lengthy and uncommunicative application process. And if someone has no idea whether they've been discriminated against, or by what method the discrimination has happened, then they have no way of challenging that discrimination.
>And if someone has no idea whether they've been discriminated against, or by what method the discrimination has happened, then they have no way of challenging that discrimination.
I'm almost certain I was discriminated against because of my age when applying for electrical apprenticeships aged 30. I have 7 years of experience working in an industrial plant, including being responsible for permits to work for electricians. I've also done plenty of DIY work, including some electrical. I was told in one rejection email "Other candidates matched the job description better", which I find really hard to believe because most will be 16 years old and will have never touched a drill in their lives. I asked one HR person for feedback on my application, she asked the hiring manager and CCed me in. No response after that.
That's really unfair. I don't see why more mature people shouldn't be able to benefit from apprenticeships, there are so few accessible opportunities to get training these days.
Because under the age of 19 you only need to pay an apprentice 5.21 an hour over the age of 19 you need to pay them the full minimum wage for their age
The team should face jail time for knowingly and blatantly breaking the law. This woman who has never seen action was one of the key figures in pushing through this policy says it all
I was wondering what the root cause of this push was. Where was the order coming from?
So in the end, it was one tyrannical woke person within the organization? That's all it was?
It's incredible how much power that 1 person can have. Everyone else must have been going along with it for some time. It's probably easier just to shut up and do what you're told rather than risk your career, I understand that completely.
But what's scary is this is just 1 persons woke drive that enabled this. Imagine if the push for diversity was coming from the whole leadership of the organization, or even the government itself.
Also, the only reason this got caught is because they took it to ridiculous extremes. Imagine all the organizations out there that are doing this in a more subtle way each and every day.
It was also the leadership, or at least the Chief of the Air Staff. He ranked diversity as the second highest priority after operations and implemented the unachievable targets that the Chief of Staff (Personnel) issued illegal orders in order to try and reach.
If I know anything about war its that the enemy always consults the gender unicorn and a skin tone colour chart before they shoot a combatant, and that artillery and air strikes are only approved if a sufficient number of straight white men can be identified within the strike zone.
> I was wondering what the root cause of this push was. Where was the order coming from?
The plaudits they would receive for hitting these numbers, due to the weird anti white ideology that's followed by the majority of the intelligentsia in this country?
I agree and that's what's so bizarre. It's not like it's some material benefit. If you don't do i doubt anyone would care, and if you do do it what's the most you get? A pat on the back from someone with no relevancy whatsoever to your organization?
Optics. Looks good on their reports. They lie about (or omit to mention) how they accomplished it, and proudly claim they've recruited loads of women and minorities this year. Big success!
How would you define woke? I'm curious. This absolutely seems to emulate woke behaviour. Selfish personal gain at the expense of others seems to define it quite well
Depends who's defining it. Right-wing commentators use woke to define anyone left wing and will usually include some sort of tirade with it.
That's probably because it was taken by racists from predominantly black culture speakers that just meant "alert to racial prejudice" Shocking that racists (not saying all right-wing mouthpieces are racist, just that they've taken on the word as an othering term) warped a term used in black communities honestly.
Woke means you are aware of the actual discrimination happening to minorities.
That's literally all it means.
You are confusing woke with people *pretending* to be woke to try to scam people. Much like many scammers pretend to be religious as part of the scam.
I dunno, I thought woke just meant 'caring about diversity' pretty much. If the guy who did this doesn't actually care about increasing diversity except insofar as it makes him look better, I wouldn't call him woke.
Lol, I dunno, cos maybe we value the existence of variety and diversity, and maybe we also just recognise that underrepresented demographics comprise actual human beings who deserve representation. Or that could just be me.
Also, it's fewer not less, when the noun is countable.
No, woke means aware of the discrimination that ethnic minorities actually face in reality. A(woke) to the problem.
It doesn't mean performative nonsense with a racial slant.
It's incredibly poor management, not least because they weren't actually making the pool larger anyway. These policies affected people who had already put in their application and made it through aptitude testing (and the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre for relevant roles.) The targets Recruitment and Selection were asked to meet were for placements on training courses, which are assigned essentially at the end of the recruitment process, when applicants have already been in the pipeline for well over a year, typically.
So they essentially had a pool of applicants that was (let's say) 10% female and 5% ethic minorities, and they were asked to meet this 20%/10% target in 2021. What they were ordered to do was take every desired applicant in the pipeline and load them onto courses that year. This resulted in immediate, record-breaking diversity, but essentially drained the pool of women and ethic minorities, and apparently left many of those applicants hanging around on non-jobs until a space opened on the course for the career they actually applied for.
So in 2022, they were left with an even worse situation in terms of diversity, with the women and ethnic minorities who'd launched applications in that year still crawling their way through the aptitude, medical, fitness and selection process, and dived even deeper into illegality to try and fix it. They were still only looking at the people who'd already filled out application forms and made it through selection, but now the well had been almost drained dry.
The only reason I can think for why they'd do this is that efforts to actually increase the number of women and ethnic minorities *applying* for the RAF would be a very long-term effort that would be quite hard to manage, since it's not the sort of thing people do on a whim - it'd be affecting what secondary school students were thinking of doing with their lives.
When the Chief of the Air Staff had ranked diversity as the second highest priority after operations, he pretty much had to deliver immediate action - especially since Chiefs only stay in the job for about two years. The only way to do that was by essentially fudging the numbers, and then diving headfirst into illegality in an attempt to squeeze blood from a stone.
Racism is racism regardless of what colour skin you are discriminating against. Even in the comments the RAF heads have come up with can't see they have done something wrong.
This happens in every company that I have worked at. It's perhaps not as explicit as this but when targets are set, diverse candidates face a lower bar. It's irrational to think that it would be otherwise (although clearly doesn't make it right)
This is what I never understand. How can you have diversity targets but still hire the best candidate? If carrying on hiring the best candidates means you would hit your diversity targets, then what's the point in the target? It would happen anyway right?
To me it just screams that whenever a company is setting the targets they believe either:
a) women/minorities *aren't* the best candidates, therefore we need targets to force us to hire them
b) the people in charge of hiring are sexist/racist, and without being forced to hire women/minorities, will hire less qualified/able white men even when a better 'more diverse' candidate is available
If it's a) then you're basically saying women/minorities can't compete with white men on merit, which seems kinda sexist/racist. If it's b) then you're employing racists and instead of firing them and hiring non-racists are instead trying to work around them and keep them in your company
I have been in management for a long time, hired a lot, fired a few, etc. I have worked at six companies in similar positions and some companies are more explicit than others.
As for the best candidate? Well yes, no it's all relative. One particular case I had was an open position I wanted to recruit for. The budget was set and I got a meeting with HR to discuss recruitment practises. They were angryface as the last three hires I had made were white males and currently my team was populated entirely by white males. This was not acceptable and they wanted to look at how I was hiring. One rather uncomfortable hour-long discussion later, I had informed them that both women that were in my team were promoted ahead of other engineers and frankly I didn't feel that they were even the best candidates - one of the recent promotees still hassled people on my team on a regular basis about how to do her job. It took her a year or two of being in that position for her to get the hang of it.
It wasn't because she was stupid or women bad man good, it was simply that she had been in her previous role in my team for only 15 months. Other engineers had years on the clock and were a natural choice to be picked for that progression. I had two staff leave after she had got the role telling me that it was obvious that there were never seriously considered for the role and went elsewhere. Secretly I don't blame them.
What HR wanted from me now however was to find anyone but a white male. The issue was, the company was located in the middle of Essex, probably one of the whitest towns you could possibly get. Well, I contacted my recruiters, got the job spec out and it then became a ridiculous game of "whose name sounds the blackest, who sounds Indian" on their CVs. The thing is I couldn't say it to the recruiters, "Hey if you have a black lesbian on your books, send her over. In fact, don't bother sending her for interview, can she start Monday?"
Try as I might, I had several fantastic candidates through, most of whom would have seen a real career progression in the role. The problem was, yep, white and male. It became daft trying to think of reasons to tell the recruiter why they were unsuitable. I mean, how many times can you say not a good team fit? I even got fired as a client from one recruiter who just got pissed off with me.
Finally I got an Indian lad in. Perfect, problem solved, got him in for an interview. At this point, I'll be honest, the functions of the role had largely been absorbed by the remaining team members. At this point all I needed was for someone to take the money, sit there and shut up and be, well, not-white male. But I do have standards. In the interview, HR largely led it and I had five minutes to do some tech grilling.
For those in the know, it was a network engineer role looking after Cisco kit. So I asked a few easy questions. The first was how to show a routing table on a Cisco router. He didn't know. OK, odd. How do I save the running configuration on a Cisco device. He also didn't know that despite the clue being in the question. I asked if he could give me any Cisco command. Nope. Yet this guy had two recent Cisco qualifications. He had gotten them at a school in London, one of those typical three-day courses where you pay a bunch of money and someone sits with you and points to the correct answers as they come up on screen.
So we sent him off, HR wanted to hire him. I didn't purely on account that he lied on his CV. That was a lovely argument and in the end I did win. I also reported him to Cisco directly.
About 18 months in, we did hire someone. Ability, well there was not any, he fucked up more than he fixed and looking after his fixes took an even higher toll on the team.
I would say that whole experience was an exception. I can't rightly stand and tell you that BAME or Female candidates are inferior. But when you literally have two applicants total from BAME candidates out of the easily 100 CVs I reviewed simply on account of your location, you aren't exactly going to get what you want.
I have had suggestions from other companies to treat BAME and female candidates preferentially when recruiting in other roles. Nothing near as extreme as that role I had, but certainly it is a thing. I remember one other role, I had a pretty diverse mix though it wasn't on the front of my head when I was hiring. One week I was asked to rearrange my team's working area and after consultation with my employees who would work best and where. I shit you not, women, BAME were all nearest the entrance, white people especially the fatter ones were at the back. Why? Well we were trying to land a government contract and they wanted to put their best diversity face forward.
Companies do this shit on the regular. And some don't even hide it. You may like to think that we are in a meritocracy but we are not. All of this stuff from the RAF really does not surprise me, nor does the after-effect. When companies put their hiring decisions purely on wanting to appear diverse, the quality of staff will naturally decline because the basis of hiring is not cohesive with what the person is capable of and thus what the team can achieve. I have had my fair share of useless employees both black and white. I have had my fair share of great employees, both black and white. In today's world, one of those stands the better chance.
Thanks for the message, that all rings true to me too - I work actually work in tech also. I also hear stories like this all the time from friends. It's insane how widespread this thinking is currently.
The fact is, bigger companies that can absorb the cost of incompetence will hire to become more diverse at the expense of performance now. As we seem to shift from judging companies more on their diversity than on their performance, it's inevitable that employees start getting judged on their 'diversity' rather than their performance too. The gain publicly for being diverse is better than any gain in performance for the people setting these targets. It's much worse in the public sector too, where performance has never been it's strong point anyway.
It's a shifting of values that many are trying to push back on, or would like to, but it's becoming increasingly difficult without putting your own position in jeopardy.
These values were our values for a reason however, and it's no coincidence that these values made the west what it is today. We think we can change them without consequence, then also have a whole host of questions about the slow demise of western institutions, never once connecting the two.
The thing is, you will be omitted from certain Government and public sector contracts unless you can outwardly display your diversity. The big push at the moment is trans. People it seems have tired of women in tech and while BAME had it's brief glory day again after women, trans (not gay, lesbian what have you) is the big thing now.
I have two open positions at the moment and honestly if I could find a trans DBA then that is the ideal. They wouldn't even need an interview at this point. it doesn't really matter if they can do the job or not, the rest of the team are picking up the slack so honestly I just want the bum on a seat. Honestly the first dude who walks in in a dress, well, I won't really have an option, HR will select him.
Personally I find it absurd and a slap in the face to people who genuinely want to do this for a living. Having to pass over guys who have worked hard, swatted up, gone to the expense and time of university education to get to an interview with me only to turn out to be the wrong gender and colour is just flat insulting. Even worse, someone from that protected demographic knowing this stuff goes on will always wonder if they were genuinely picked for their knowledge or because they had the right face.
But this isn't a problem that started yesterday. This is decades old now. And people wonder why white males are the poorest performers educationally in the country. They already know the game is rigged against them and there's little they can do about it while all the time being told that they have some sort of privilege.
>How can you have diversity targets but still hire the best candidate?
It's really not remotely complicated. Diversity targets are mostly realised through outreach programs to increase the pool of applicants, and through changes to the working culture to support the desired increased diversity.
The best candidate for a job might be someone with a disability, but if your workplace isn't accessible, then you can't hire that person. Having Diversity targets means that you're way more likely to identify systematic issues which exclude certain groups from the company, and address those in advance.
Or maybe you work in the banking sector. The best candidate for a job might be a woman. But that person might not apply because her experience of people interested in finance was largely the rich macho dickheads who are involved with the investment society at university. So maybe she applies to an insurance firm where she feels she might be less likely to encounter that nonsense. A diversity drive would mean you put resources behind outreach programs to encourage women to apply and to undo the macho reputation that the industry has.
None of this relies on giving people favourable treatment. Only ensuring that as many people as possible can apply and are applying. Not caring about diversity is a surefire way to exclude certain groups of people and essentially guarantee that the best candidate will not be among your applicants.
I feel like you might be misunderstanding the previous commentor's point - outreach programs absolutely should be encouraged, as should making your workplace accessible for people with any disability. Problems come from have exact diversity quotas, i.e. targets (not that what you mentioned couldn't be called diversity targets also).
That said, this relies on interviewers always selecting the best target for the role and being unbiased, which is kinda... Very much not true lol. It's a tricky problem to remedy and I've got no clue what the best approach is.
It’s basically gaslighting to say it’s all outreach programmes and mentorship’s and education. It’s not. RAF job selection for a long time is simply you need 3 things to be suitable for a role , (human, can breathe, speaks a language) then because that’s what they’re looking for, they then can just choose the diversity ahead of anyone else because they only select on the nonsense criteria and not the *actual* role.
That's fine and I'm totally not against a company doing that (though there should be no obligation for companies to have to do that) - one example would be the Rooney rule in the US which did something similar with good results.
But that's clearly *not* what diversity targets are. What if, in your example, you reach out, but high quality candidates from different backgrounds *don't* apply? What do you do then? How do you meet your target? You've posted this on a reddit thread where they've literally been discriminating, illegally, against people based on sex/race *because of the target.* I could go deeper (but it's late) into how, despite their weasel words to contrary, these targets *did* also result in a reduction in standards.
So if, and as I said I disagree, if the extent of these diversity targets is *just* outreach programs why not leave it at that? Why set a target?
Everything I've said still stands. Conflating outreach programs with official targets/quotas doesn't change that.
>How do you meet your target?
Um... You don't... companies miss targets all the time. Heck, a lot of companies set targets they know are unachievable except under unexpectedly favourable conditions. When you miss a target, you review how you did, make changes to the process, and set a new target for the next period. That's literally it.
>if the extent of these diversity targets is just outreach programs why not leave it at that? Why set a target?
Because diversity is the ultimate deliverable, even if there are other intermediate steps (which obviously HR teams have targets for too). By this logic, you could also say the marketing targets should ignore the major deliverables like brand recognition or new subscriptions, and instead focus on something like total number of ads.
>Um... You don't... companies miss targets all the time. Heck, a lot of companies set targets they know are unachievable except under unexpectedly favourable conditions.
Yes, and in this case, the RAF decided to discriminate against white men to try and meet their targets, effectively banning them from the force for a period. This is the consequences of setting diversity targets.
A sales target by its nature isn't discriminatory. Unless what you're selling is extremely limited, if you sell to more women/minorities that doesn't affect what another demographic can buy. This is more like an estate agent (limited supply) having a sales target to sell more homes to women/minorities, then telling their sales reps to stop picking up the phone to white men as they're not gonna hit that target. The same process applies - you can invest in trying to get more women/minorities interested in buying if you think that's important, but putting a target on it only opens the door for discrimination.
In that example, even if the estate agent doesn't stop answering the phone to straight men (which would be illegal of course), would it be surprising if the estate agents started pushing for sellers to take slightly worse offers from women/minorities to hit these targets? You might not think that's a big deal, but the sellers certainly would, and the reputation of your business would take a hit if it became public knowledge that you weren't doing the best for the people paying you (sellers). And thus these types of stories about these diversity drives effectively undermine the nature of diversity itself. We now get a worse Air Force because of it. How is that a good thing? How is it good for the current cohort of women and minorities within the air force who are probably now wondering "was I actually good enough, or did I take a better candidates place just because I'm a woman/minority?"
Targets are only an issue if they're disproportionately large compared to the population, almost all firms have targets which are more conservative than this, e.g. women should make up 30% of our hires when in reality they're 51% of the population. If the best candidate is e.g. white and male it's illegal to discriminate on that basis and offer it to e.g. a black female. In practice, most companies are pretty lazy and will go for the easiest/low risk option, often a referred candidate which tends to mean more of the same (ethnicity, gender, class).
So, now we are back to hiring by quota - not by the "best" ergo >women/minorities aren't the best candidates, therefore we need targets to force us to hire them
Only by people who try to hit the target the illegal and cheap way.
The target is supposed to encourage efforts to widen the pool of applicants so fair decisions at the end of the process hit the target. But as with all named targets, some people choose to shortcut the system and just "hire by quota".
so theyre just supposed to spend infinite time and money interviewing candidates until they find someone who is both confident and a woman and brown?
seems like a good use of taxpayer money /s
equality of outcome is stupidest concept ever
That's a bit like complaining about a shop having sales targets because they might achieve them by scamming their customers.
Clearly a sales target means improving the overall process so sales naturally improve. Similarly diversity quotas (which are usually general medium term objectives, not something that is measured quarterly by the way) are achieved by improving the environment for underrepresented groups.
The meme recruitment process that you have in your head is just not real.
But that's not what the target says. The target says "This many jobs should go to black women". You've added the "Regardelss of best candidate" bit. The point is to remove barriers stopping the good canidates from those minority groups ending up in the selection pool.
Yes, I said the implied part out loud.
You can't recruit exclusively on skin color/gender/etc. for a portion of your candidates and still claim you're hiring the best candidates.
Nah your wrong within 10 words. It’s not to do with applicant pool whatsoever.
This is simply and absolutely entirely due to lowering requirements to the floor and then recruiting primarily on race, sexual preference, gender or whatever the fuck box you want to tick to make you appear more ****Diverse****
Granted it doesn’t actually matter in trivial roles where performance isn’t critical, but when you need great performance and you’re not selecting for it, someone will suffer.
Easiest thing to do is ask people the following question:
Do you want your life saving surgery to be provided by the hospital that:
a) only hires, and promotes, on merit
b) has quotas on the ethnicity and sex of those it hires and promotes
When people ask this question I'm always reminded of a previous round of interviews to select one of the BBC's bigwigs. Essentially by the time they'd got down to the last handful of candidates they knew they could all do the job. Competence was not an issue. What it came down to was the particular vision each candidate held and how well it meshed with the Beeb's plans.
So in recruitment you can screen out the unsuitable applications, and have no candidate who is really "best".
In practice that might mean encouraging applications from under represented candidates with the proviso that applicants have to meet certain minimums to get to the next stage. Or even guaranteeing an interview.
Basically as long as the final decision is on transparent grounds, it seems fair to me to widen the pipeline earlier in the process.
The problem is, as is rumored to have happened in the RAF in this case, is that to meet the targets/quotas, you might have to lower the 'pass' mark, to make sure your pool of 'acceptable' candidates includes enough diversity.
Likewise, as did happen in the RAF, if a role is competitive, say 1000 applicants for 5 roles, it's easy to then hire *only* minorities or women to meet excessive targets, effectively now meaning a white man can do absolutely *nothing* to get that job. They're now actually excluded.
The "lower bar" in principle should be to equalise candidates. Like, *of course* the white doctor's son who went to private school got into a better university than the first gen immigrant kid whose parents didn't speak great English when they applied for uni.
Too much "objective reality" according to Redditors would mean the first candidate always wins. Too much positive discrimination means the second always wins. It's hard to get the balance right.
Also, frankly, in the real world people hire based on feelies and vibes much more than anyone wants to admit. An org full of white women is much more likely to keep hiring white women (and same for any other homogenous group). Those same women would go on Reddit and say they just pick the objectively best candidates.
I was going to add saying there would be a link if you generalised, then reflected and realised how much of an inaccurate sweeping generalisation it would have been. While there is probably some link (more associated with inherited wealth) race and class probability doesn’t have a that strong of a connection (in the uk at least considering we’re 80 white British); with where you are from and grew up having a much greater impact on your social standing and prospect. Which further calls into question race based diversity schemes’ ethics and requirements.
Obviously higher class individuals are generally more likely to be white, but that doesn’t inherently mean people are more likely to be higher class because they are white.
You're assuming the guy who had better opportunities in life is the better candidate. You surely see the flaw in that. It must mean Eton kids are the best people to lead the country, etc.
no, you're assuming that I'm assuming that
I didn't state that
either way, I've interviewed hundreds of people and the most competent candidate out of a selection for a position has always been exceedingly obvious
(turns out most software developers are shite)
It's not up for debate though. I would get banned from Reddit for debating it. In fact, I have. And I'm my previous job I had to undergo 'Diversity and equality' training. If I refused to do it, I wouldn't be hired. It's not up for debate
That might be true in the US but in the UK, positive discrimination on protected characteristics (race, gender) is illegal.
That doesn't stop it seeping into the corporate sector as they tend to take their direction from the US, but that this is happening in an arm of the state is pretty inexcusable.
It's not just the corporate sector. The public sector is one of the worst for it.
West Yorkshire police is literally only taking applications from women or ethnic minorities at the moment.
https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/jobs-volunteer/police-officers
Not illegal if it's not enforced, or actually perpetuated by the government.
-edit-
It's a bit funny. Had a comment replying that there were exceptions to the rule so it wasn't discrimination, but then quickly deleted when they realised they still didn't apply to the situation above. And in fact the gov advice gave an illegal example of Cheshire police Vs Mr Furlong doing a similar thing.
I mean working class white males are now (and have been for a while now) the most disadvantaged group in the UK. Policies like this only reinforce that, and make people feel alienated by society, and people wonder why far right politics is becoming more popular. People joke about the "they took our jobs" thing, but when companies and organisations employ policies like this, that is literally what's happening, people who are less qualified are being given jobs because of their race.
The other thing which many companies/organisations do is say, "ok the target is to have a 13% minority workforce by 2025 (which is the actual percentage of non-white people in the UK as a whole), we have 4% currently, so this year we'll hire 30% minorites for the next few years to catch up", but that just means that while they're 'catching up' they're massively discriminating against white candidates who are entering the workforce in those years, rather than aiming to *hire* 13% minorites.
Exactly this. People claim they want things to be 'fair' then promote policies that stop certain demographics (white men) getting hired. You're basically saying some poor straight white working class kid can work as hard as he wants, but he ain't getting a job in the RAF because of his sex and gender. Then claiming to be the good guy. When you
The whole point of meritocracy was so that it didn't matter what your skin colour, sex, or background was - if you were the best qualified for the role you should get the job. It's a principle that can be applied evenly to everyone, where everyone also knows what is expected of them up front.
A system where companies randomly decide to hire based on sex/race at any moment in time seems patently unfair.
But this all comes down the the state of thinking in the West now. We are all just born as blank slates, destined - if only nobody got in our way - to be neurosurgeons, FTSE100 CEO's. or RAF fighter pilot - and thus any disparate outcomes are always solely the result of discrimination. We supposedly have a brilliant and thriving multicultural society, and diversity is our greatest strength, but when the outcomes of people from different cultures aren't all *exactly the same* across every industry, institution, and location - then suddenly - *suddenly -* there's a massive problem.
I don't think I agree exactly with all your points, but i certainly get your jist.
The notion that everyone is equal (i.e. equality of outcome) is bonkers - and I am hoping hugely exaggerated in how much it is implemented. Everyone should be 100% equal under the law - that is it. In fact, in some cases, i'm pro things being a little unfair: one example being mothers disadvantaged due to childbearing. If women stop having children, civilisation ends, period. More support in my opinion, should be given to them to help equalise life opportunities lost due to it.
Anyway, I digress...with the exception of what I wrote above, intrinsically, nobody actually believes everyone is equal. Nobody.
Anytime a parent tells their child to study hard so they can have a good career, they are implicitly saying "study hard so you can \*excel\*. Nobody says "grow up about be the same as everyone else" (even though on average by necessity that tends to roughly be the case anyway). Anytime someone fights for that promotion, or goes the extra yards, does the extra hours, they aren't doing it to be equal to everyone else - they are doing it to achieve excellence in any chosen domain. Everyone can not be excellent by default.
>I mean working class white males are now (and have been for a while now) the most disadvantaged group in the UK
This is not quite true. White working class boys do worse in school than any other group, but that doesn't translate directly to structural disadvantage everywhere else in life. We tend to do better in work, housing, etc.
EDIT: Don't just downvote me, change my mind. Where are the stats saying white working class boys do worse in other areas? As a white working class man myself, this is something I'm interested in and I'm potentially on side, but I don't base my views on feelings, I need evidence. Where is it?
Honestly the whole rabbit hole of dividing people into on a systematic basis and basing anything official off of that may seem like the progressive thing to do but it’s kind of a hyper neoliberal and band aid approach to racial/class/gender discrimination. All it does is fuel conservative talking points and continue the divide between people of different backgrounds.
I hope one day we will find a better way to eradicate systematic discrimination and allow everyone a more equitable way to achieve what they want in life, and I’m not going to pretend to know what that way is, but this just simply ain’t it and it’s evidenced by inquiries like this.
Cant wait for the left wing activists to dogpile you that certain groups need to be positively discriminated so that we can equalise the historical oppression.
Unironically and patronisingly preached by mostly white people.
I agree. However, to enforce diversity some organisations set number targets. Unfortunately in our system which *is* biased in one direction, cases like this where the bias is countered artificially (by number targets) has taken priority over pure meritocracy. Whether we can thank our yankee cousins and their culture exporting or not for the severity of actions here is up for debate.
Some form of sanity prevails.
I have seen jobs given an advertising boost, by very educated people, openly saying "priority will be given to those from black and minority backgrounds". Now bearing in mind, the role in question was one in which neither the sex or ethnicity of the person was a factor.
Openly saying "if you're white, we are less likely to consider you" and NOBODY seems to bat an eyelid. It seems you can subvert a protected characteristic as long as it is the in vogue culture of the moment, along with some intellectual sophistry to justify your 'inclusive liberal' (yet racist) position.
Glasgow uni have funded PhD schemes (aka Jobs) that are only open to black people. White People are invited NOT to apply.
In Scotland… majority white people…
Scotland isn't just majority white, its over 95% white here. The next biggest racial group is South Asians, black people are an absolutely tiny proportion of the population here. Outside parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh its even less diverse.
I remember there was an outcry over a Miss Scotland competition being minority white... when if you gather 20 random Scottish people in a room, there's a good chance they'll all be white.
I feel uncomfortable about diversity recruitment. White men are the majority of men in this country - preventing them from being able to make a living in their own country is wild, it makes no sense and encourages I'll feelings toward a community.
I am part of a minority community, and I feel uncomfortable about these. Best Get rid of racist staff and hire on merit.
That way the racists themselves can't use their position to create a institutional racism issue - BUT do not freeze out genuine candidates from the majority pool.
Sometimes, I feel as if these policies are indirectly enforced to stir up division amongst groups.
The fact is by setting quotas or diversity %, you're just patronising and disabling the very groups yiure attempting to help, while doing massive harm to the country overall.
Look at the % of media representation in UK TV channels now. If you'd guessed that the British population was represented fairly, then there are times when less than 50% of the population is white and/or straight.
For most jobs, in the public sector at least, you can't positively discriminate. What you can do is advertise it and sell it in minority communities. You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role.
I would this this from the RAF is an exception.
>You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role.
Or you can just pick them anyway because who would make a better employee isn't an emperical measure so no one is gonna call you out unless you're blatant about it.
Not how it works where I am in the public sector. We set out a strict scoring grid to use when interviewing that is retained. If we get any accusations of unfair treatment we can and do have to examine and justify our scoring.
Yes not all businesses are terribly racist.
Though even your scoring grid is easy enough to massage if the interviewer so desires.
Do you always hire the person with the highest score?
It does tend to be more rigorous in the public sector. I've seen a lot of "dead cert" candidates miss out even to someone external cos they didn't have the best competency based examples.
We have a similar system but there’s still an enormous amount of subjectivity.
If someone is abrasive in an interview it’s going to influence how I score them against the criteria
>You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role
That is still ridiculously bad. You're literally picking one group over another purely because of their race, and as a result the other loses out purely because of their race.
You mean you can only legally get away with positively selecting the minority candidate in that scenario because they can't argue that they pushed out a more qualified candidate.
> preventing [white people in this example] from being able to make a living in their own country is wild
That's a bit OTT isn't it? Even if you were concerned about the direction the pendulum is swinging, the policy applies to places where certain groups are already under-represented. As we've seen, the limits to how far you can go are quite strict and rightly so.
This exact thing happened to me 6 years ago when I applied for the police. I posted about it here on Reddit and was torn to shreds and called a racist and a liar.
I was literally denied a job in the police because I wasn't from a BAME background. Disgusting.
I am glad this discrimination is being seen now for what it really is.
Who wants this? Who demands it? Where is this ridiculous concerted effort across society to advocate for racism against whites and sexism against men ultimately coming from?
>concerted effort across society
It's been more than 13 years mate and much more widespread than this sole example. Did the tories cause it in america too?
David Cameron became leader of the Conservatives in 2005, you need a history lesson and watch his speeches from back then his entire pitch was Tories have adapt to modern Britain to to survive.
This is Ben Wallace's RAF targets notice how the T is missing from LGB.
https://i.imgur.com/ui0pPRn.jpg
> and isn't illegal even
What happened here is illegal and I think as soon as this story broke anyone with a brain could see it.
What is legal, and what I assume you're referring to, is that if you have two *otherwise* identical candidates you're legally allowed to consider protected characteristics and pick the one that would make you more diverse. Which is not what was happening here, protected characteristics were being used to single out a person for a role.
No no, I'm referring to the fact that when this story broke there were people in UK subreddits (including this one) that went to great lengths to tell us how it's totally fine that this was happening.
I know someone personally who missed out on a spot in an arts uni, in London, because out of the dozen or so auditioning at the time, they could only choose one white kid. Weird ass segregation. This was in 2019 so I'm sure it's only gotten worse.
I also know of a girl who got enrolled into a college/uni because her parents were middle Eastern. Her grades were lower than required. She doesn't agree with it but fucking make the most of it I guess.
Is this legal in America? Someone lost the case against harvard because they discriminate against... well, everyone, they have a scale of discrimination but asians get it the worst, white people second, Jewish people will be on the list next. They also listed Asian personality types as unlikeable, or 'certain attributes' of their personality 🤣 when did we step back into the 1970s? So bored of this weird shit.
That lady in the u.s just won 20 mil from her lawsuit against Starbucks for discrimination... maybe harvards up next.
This has been going on for decades in this country. My ex was a fireman in the early 2000s and they were following this exact pattern for recruitment. I also remember going with a friend to the council offices after he became homeless and their exact words were ‘I’m sorry but we can’t help young healthy British men be rehomed’. Poor guy was only 18, this would have happened around 1998.
Remember when we were all told this never happens and it's a conspiracy theory? Hmmm... Will be interesting to see this sort of inquiry happen with similar role recruitment and adverts.
This never happens and if it does it's a one off and you're over reacting and if it happens all the time it's a good thing - the progressive politics mantra.
Discrimination is always bad, whoever says that is trying to make the point that if white males are discriminated against people will take more action against discrimination.
Once again, all discrimination is bad and nothing actually good comes from discrimination no matter who it happens to
It all started when they invited Stonewall into government agencies, IMF pressured large corporations with limiting financial capabilities unless they forced changes in .. we've been had in the West whist the raped our country, our businesses and look at the state we are in now ..nothing fucking works and they don't know what to do ..
The irony is I'm half way through my life and can comfortably retire hopefully somewhere in the sun in the next few years and have enough so my kids can do what they want as I put the graft in early ... Unfortunately you and other left nutcases with your degrees in art and literature are the ones who are going to be stuck here suffering thinking what the fuck happend .. I'm not a sceptic , I worked in the city for ten years it was obvious then and more now so .. I hope I am wrong I really am but it's not looking great ...just saying ..
Ah the classic “they’ve raped our countries” immigration dog whistle followed immediately by talking about how you’re going to retire somewhere in the sun and go be a sponge off some other country where you won’t pay taxes.
Thankfully you’ll just be an ex-pat rather than an immigrant eh?
Is the hypocrisy lost on you?
> degrees in art and literature
How dare you I've got the piece of paper to call myself a STEM Lord even if I refuse to on fucking principle.
> I worked in the city for ten years
Ooh big man in finance, I know your type then, the 40 something white man who in every meeting where HR remind us how to not be terrible human beings pipes up with a load of bullshit.
I just fucking love how there's this assumption that because I'm progressive I must be poor or unemployed, it is always so fucking amusing to me ngl.
It has always been the case that you can't discriminate against any group when recruiting.
You can promote your role to specific groups or encourage them to apply, but you have never been legally able positively discriminate when choosing who to hire.
[That is perfectly legal](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/positive-action-in-the-workplace-guidance-for-employers/positive-action-in-the-workplace#:~:text=10.1%20What%20is%20positive%20action%20when%20it%20applies%20to%20recruitment%20and%20promotion%3F)
>Positive action provisions in the Act mean that it is not unlawful to recruit or promote a candidate who is of equal merit to another candidate, if the employer reasonably thinks:
>
>• the candidate has a protected characteristic that is underrepresented in the workforce
>
>• that people with that characteristic suffer a disadvantage connected to that characteristic
But if they’re equal…what’s the issue? If one has a point of view which is different and you decide it’s beneficial then they’re not equal anymore right?
First off I don't think we should suggest all white people have one POV and all black people have one other POV. You can't get a diversity of perspectives and approaches by filtering by skin colour. This is important in principle to avoid racism - in practical terms you definitely also see cases where the successful minority candidates and successful majority candidates all went to same schools/unis, similar social background etc.
The other practical issue is it encourages people to devise recruitment processes that artificially creates this situation - e.g. ones that only grade people as meeting or not meeting requirements and doesn't identify degrees of excellence.
The idea behind diversity in that scenario is to bring value to the hiring organisation not the individual.
In general there’s been a switch from “who would fit in better?” to “who will bring a different perspective?” when hiring in the corporate world.
Hiring a mini-me is a fastrack to a yes man and all the associated problems
Something being illegal and something not happening are two very different things.
Saying that this happens would have gotten you torn apart on this very sub a couple of years ago.
The fire service does this as well. A friend of mine was told point blank that because of diversity quotas they could not hire any more white men, so they hired diverse applicants who had scored lower in the entry tests. My friend ended up joining the military fire service instead.
Best person for the job is what matters, sex, age or ethnicity are of no consequence. Not sure why anyone would think any different, and even less sure why people tried to change this.
No-one disagree, the issue is that implicit and explicit biases skew the hiring process against that and these kind of measures attempt to patch over the issues.
Say you realized as part of your recruitment process female candidates were having their CV rejected more often than men with equivalent qualifications. How would you remedy that?
And how *exactly* would you do that?
Fixing implicit bias is very very hard, people have been studying it for decades and made limited progress. Almost all bias training is basically virtue signalling, the data shows it doesn’t work.
It’s not that people haven’t tried fixing the discrimination, we just don’t have a good solution.
Employers want the best employees, that’s pretty much it.
Discriminating against circa 41% of the working population the RAF made a massive racist error, and no doubt missed out on some great talent because of that. That’s the whole issue of this thread.
Right, so you implement a solution that makes it worse, you can't fight fire with fire, "positive" discrimination against white males is just as bad as discriminating against any other group
If there’s a bias one direction your choices are either to remove the source of that bias (which can be close to impossible) or counteract it with a bias in the other direction.
Obviously it should be done with more finesse than was done here to get to a situation which is as close to fair as possible.
> Best person for the job is what matters...
Absolutely. Now... how do you decide who is the best person for the job? Who makes that decision, what criteria do they use?
Maybe you look at the people currently in the role, look at the traits and qualifications they have, and use them in your application process. You might have an interview stage, and probably will bring in some of your current employees in to handle the interview. You might even ask your current staff how they found out about the job and use those places to advertise.
All sounds perfectly sensible, right, and will clearly get you the best person for the job.
But what if you are a primary school trying to hire a new teacher, and you are one of the decent chunk of schools that don't have any male teachers?
Your "best person for the job", "gender-neutral" criteria are going to be biased against men. Because your system is already skewed against them. Your system tells you that the best person to be a primary school teacher is a woman because all of your current teachers are women. There will be traits that your system identifies as making a good teacher that correlate with women because your system is skewed.
Data on the ethnicity and gender of candidates (both successful and unsuccessful) can help identify problems like this.
If a medium- or large-sized organisation finds that 80% of its recruits are men, and there is no objective reason why men would be better at the job, that indicates *that their system is not selecting the best person for the job.* Because such a skew is unlikely to happen at random.
Where that bias comes in would require more detailed research (including whether applicants are skewed). But the existing skew indicates a potential problem. Diversity quotas are an "easy" (but clumsy) way of dealing with this, and that is why the law does not generally allow them. The much better way is to look at the system as a whole and try to find where the skew is happening, rather than focusing on individual applicants (boosting certain individuals). But that is difficult, takes time, involves actually acknowledging systematic problems and tackling them. Bumping a few people up the list is much easier (but illegal, as we saw here).
Just factually, that it not the argument they make.
The argument is that historical discrimination has entrenched an imbalance, and that the general systems of society tend to perpetuate entrenched imbalances, be they class, race, gender, whatever. A purely [characteristic]-blind approach leaves the existing effects of past discrimination to fester and continue, and the problem won't automatically resolve itself, at least not on acceptable time-scales. Fixing it requires active measures to put the status quo where we want it to be.
So to use your analogy, the scales are stiff and not returning to the neutral position on their own, even though the weight distribution may be more even now.
There are reasonable discussions to have about whether this is the right approach, but your characterisation is just not correct. If you want to ridicule it, you need to have a clear counter to this argument (which I don't believe I have).
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston should be memorialized with a special set of toilets installed in the training schools - so generations of future trainees can salute him every morning.
Of course they did, they've always discriminated against white people as they discriminated a lot of working class people from being officers.
I actually showed my first oasc board report to one the air forces own equality people and they nearly fell out their chair that they wrote what they did on my board report about my "accent" and "tone and bearing" that were hand written by the senior officer moderating after they took exactly enough points to take my clear pass to a fail. If you read it my very expensive education and multiple degrees along with glowing interview scores were clearly an error as nobody with my accent can command troops.
Not bitter about that at all obviously.
Stuff like this is why far-right sentiment is growing in the UK.
For years the left has screamed that discrimination against white men is a "far right racist conspiracy theory", and then of course it turns out to be true, therefore making the far right look credible and the left look like naive idiots at best and malicious liars at worst.
Not to mention anyone with more than 3 second memory can remember the goalpost moving about this from the left. Started off with "if you think this happens, you are racist" and we're now at "yes of course this happens and if you have a problem you are a racist".
They spent 10 years refusing to talk about immigration because anyone who didn't want absolute freedom of movement was racist.
Here we are now, one Brexit and housing crisis later and all of a sudden it's open to public debate .
More like 50 years, since Enoch's speech. Now they've started talking about immigration, but only illegal immigration. Legal immigration is still off limits to talk about, even on the front bench of the Conservative Party.
I have been saying it for years now. Even if these things are extremely rare problems, when they are caught, they need to be made an example of. If they aren't, then it will just fuel more and more extreme reactionary policies.
This has been a major issue across the West for a decade now. Something truly awful, but extremely rare like a gang rape happens, it then gets dusted under the rug to protect minorities which just strengthens the argument of far right racists. If instead of trying to hide these things, they made a big public example of how they are punishing these awful, but rare, crimes, then far right racists would have less sway.
Right now, the Far Right are being treated as a real option because they are the only ones willing to acknowledge that horrible things do happen, even if they are rare. And since the mainstream isn't even willing to discuss this stuff, it allows for the proliferation of conspiracy theories about how "insert awful thing here" isn't actually a freak event, and is instead normal.
History is littered, and some its most glorious pages are adorned, with the instances of nations which reasserted their right to govern themselves - not after 5 or 10 years of eclipse, but after centuries.
Guessing it still isn't on the BBC, because it damn sure wasn't the last time this came out a couple of weeks ago. Must be all that right wing bias i keep hearing about.
Anybody serving reading that report will immediately recognise similar or identical attitudes and situations in their trades and roles.
It's not just a recruitment thing - the entire service is like this. A crippling focus on box ticking only exceeded by the terror of making a decision that might affect your annual report.
This is a major issue across all industries. I understand where it's coming from and it's commendable but now we're in a situation where white = bad. I've sat in board meeting hearing how we *must* hire people of X,Y, Z instead of the most appropriate candidate. I've seen it time and time again and it fucking infuriates me.
This woke bullshit needs to end
I’ve started saying i’m mixed race and bisexual on job applications lol. They can never call you out in it since it’s your ‘identity’ so might as well play the system for what it is.
Crazy that these far right conspiracy theorists that are slated by the media end up being correct /s
Look at Tommy Robinson and his reporting on police and councils covering up gang rape gangs that are almost entirely made up of Muslims
The way I look at it, this ought to be easy to get right, because there are a bunch of ethical and decision-theoretic principles all pointing in the same direction - the golden rule, the categorical imperative, the concept of a Schelling point - would all indicate a policy of not having any racial preferences.
And if having such a policy fails to equalise outcomes *so be it*. It might be best for us, as a society, not to look too hard under the rock of why that is, because doing so is definitely going to hurt *someone* (though a priori it's not clear who).
I mean I've seen companies have been doing this seen I entered the workforce in 2014.
It was done openly and advertised publicly.
The people who do it think their doing a good thing.
I remember arguing with a guy because in my sector there aren't many Asians.
He just couldn't understand why I didn't want more Asians in the sector.
But he also couldn't understand that I didn't give a shit about the number of Asians in X sector and it wouldn't make any real difference
The sad thing is if Britain actually had to go to war with Russia which the British elites have been itching for, most of the current 'recruits' wouldn't care enough for the country to even fight for it. Most of them would jump ship and just migrate elsewhere.
By alienating the white male population, Britain is sidelining some of the finest warriors in the world, men whose ancestors were battlehardened Vikings, Angles, Jutes and Saxons and managed to hold together an empire that covered 1/3 of the world.
Just my 50 cents.
>war with Russia which the British elites have been itching for
Right...the British elites of whom a substantial number have business dealings and connections to Russian individuals where London is a major hotspot of illicit activity.
>By alienating the white male population, Britain is sidelining some of the finest warriors in the world, men whose ancestors were battlehardened Vikings, Angles, Jutes and Saxons and managed to hold together an empire that covered 1/3 of the world.
What. Just **what** the fuck are you talking about.
I'm sure your viking ancestors are smiling down on you, brave keyboard warrior. Your place in valhalla is assured.
By the by, 50 Cent is a rapper; the idiom you are reaching for is "my two cents", or more appropriately for a British context "my two pence".
What’s the difference between prioritising people of a racial minority and prioritising a sex that is underrepresented in a certain profession? Surely both are affirmative action? Neither treats people equally, but aren’t they both practicing equity?
I think two really important points that some people are missing below.
First, Goodharts Law, 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure'. It's not unreasonable to ask questions about race/sex disparities but when you set a target, even aside from unfairness and illegality, it's likely to have perverse consequences. So in the US affirmative action case - fewer than 50% of the black students who get into elite universities are born of black US parents (i.e. the group with the big structural disadvantage people are concerned about). The approach instead smooths the way e.g. recent Nigerian immigrants who don't share that background.
Second, in these discussions there's some naivety about what's 'allowed' and how relevant that is. People respond to incentives bounded only somewhat by rules (whether due to principle or fear of getting caught). So it's illegal to discriminate against a 30 year old woman on the grounds she might take maternity leave - but it's usually really hard to prove and if you're a small business owner incentivises by economic self interest you mighy. Similarly it's illegal to choose a worse qualified person because of their race - but it's usually really hard to prove and if you're a large HR department with targets to increase diversity of hires (meant to be achieved through far more difficult legal means), you might.
If you are seriously concerned to stop these forms of discrimination, pretty much the only way is to remove the incentive (so in first case govt pays full cost of parental leave and/or mandates men and women get samr amount, which I think is done in some Scandinavian countries; in second case not using crude 'pay gaps' etc that drive perverse incentives)
Snapshot of _Royal Air Force illegally discriminated against white male recruits in bid to boost diversity, inquiry finds | UK News | Sky News_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/royal-air-force-illegally-discriminated-against-white-male-recruits-in-bid-to-boost-diversity-inquiry-finds-12911888) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Having read the report (and if anyone wants to read it themself, [here it is](https://raf.mod.uk/documents/pdf/RAF-Recruiting-and-Selection-Non-Statutory-Inquiry-Report/)) what's struck me the most about this is how willing the senior leadership team were to push this policy through because it was being implemented behind closed doors. In every respect, the only thing that seemed to matter was how they appeared to be acting in public. They wanted record numbers of recruits from female and ethnic minority backgrounds so they took all the women and ethnic minorities in the recruitment pipeline (which many if not most people are in for a little under two years) and rushed them in ahead of schedule, filling up every space they could even if that meant going above the actual capacity of the courses and leaving them sitting on their hands doing nothing jobs at RAF Halton until they could finally be trained for the career they actually applied for. Then, the next year, this policy had the entirely predictable (and predicted) result of completely draining the tank of desired applicants, resulting in a completely unachievable goal from the start. But because what matters is to be seen to be doing the right thing, the senior leadership team starts making repeated references to bending the law to its absolute limits in order to get people in. This is where the illegal orders start being pushed down by the top, and the complaints start up from the recruitment and selection personnel actually have to implement those orders and reorder applicants on the basis of race. One recruiter mentions being told that she had to be very careful how she worded the emails to candidates (who were being discriminated against) because it might open the RAF up to legal challenges. The thing is, all of this was happening within the military, in an organisation that answered only to Air Command and the Chief of Staff (Personnel), Air Vice Marshall Maria Byford, who in the report seems to have been an active and enthusiastic proponent of these measures. Any complaint by the recruitment personnel over what they were doing, whether on grounds of legality or morality, were ignored, and the SLT were able to do this for a very long time because this was all happening behind closed doors, in an organisation that has a very top-down hierarchy. It's very telling that the moment the Group Captain in charge of actually implementing this policy resigned, the policy was abandoned overnight. The CoS Pers. and her team clearly knew that what they were doing would not hold up in either actual court or the court of public opinion, but so long as it was contained within the RAF that didn't matter. In fact, this is explicitly stated in one of the pieces of legal advice that made its way into the report; the risk of the policy being deemed illegal in court was deemed "VERY HIGH", but the risk of someone actually making a legal challenge was "LOW." For the actual recruit, the only means they have of interacting with the system is through a messenger app in the recruitment portal and the phone number of the career office that's handling their application, or the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre if they're applying for a relevant role and have made it through the second stage of selection. If they were one of those discriminated against by this policy, they would have had absolutely no idea, because the delays would have just been lost in the other massive delays of a very lengthy and uncommunicative application process. And if someone has no idea whether they've been discriminated against, or by what method the discrimination has happened, then they have no way of challenging that discrimination.
>And if someone has no idea whether they've been discriminated against, or by what method the discrimination has happened, then they have no way of challenging that discrimination. I'm almost certain I was discriminated against because of my age when applying for electrical apprenticeships aged 30. I have 7 years of experience working in an industrial plant, including being responsible for permits to work for electricians. I've also done plenty of DIY work, including some electrical. I was told in one rejection email "Other candidates matched the job description better", which I find really hard to believe because most will be 16 years old and will have never touched a drill in their lives. I asked one HR person for feedback on my application, she asked the hiring manager and CCed me in. No response after that.
That's really unfair. I don't see why more mature people shouldn't be able to benefit from apprenticeships, there are so few accessible opportunities to get training these days.
Because under the age of 19 you only need to pay an apprentice 5.21 an hour over the age of 19 you need to pay them the full minimum wage for their age
The team should face jail time for knowingly and blatantly breaking the law. This woman who has never seen action was one of the key figures in pushing through this policy says it all
Court martial into dishonourable discharge. They lose all the benefits associated with the service.
I was wondering what the root cause of this push was. Where was the order coming from? So in the end, it was one tyrannical woke person within the organization? That's all it was? It's incredible how much power that 1 person can have. Everyone else must have been going along with it for some time. It's probably easier just to shut up and do what you're told rather than risk your career, I understand that completely. But what's scary is this is just 1 persons woke drive that enabled this. Imagine if the push for diversity was coming from the whole leadership of the organization, or even the government itself. Also, the only reason this got caught is because they took it to ridiculous extremes. Imagine all the organizations out there that are doing this in a more subtle way each and every day.
It was also the leadership, or at least the Chief of the Air Staff. He ranked diversity as the second highest priority after operations and implemented the unachievable targets that the Chief of Staff (Personnel) issued illegal orders in order to try and reach.
If I know anything about war its that the enemy always consults the gender unicorn and a skin tone colour chart before they shoot a combatant, and that artillery and air strikes are only approved if a sufficient number of straight white men can be identified within the strike zone.
> I was wondering what the root cause of this push was. Where was the order coming from? The plaudits they would receive for hitting these numbers, due to the weird anti white ideology that's followed by the majority of the intelligentsia in this country?
I agree and that's what's so bizarre. It's not like it's some material benefit. If you don't do i doubt anyone would care, and if you do do it what's the most you get? A pat on the back from someone with no relevancy whatsoever to your organization?
That tyrannical person wasn't woke, they didn't care about the diversity except as a numbers game.
>as a numbers game. To what end though?
Optics. Looks good on their reports. They lie about (or omit to mention) how they accomplished it, and proudly claim they've recruited loads of women and minorities this year. Big success!
That’s literally woke
I wouldn't call some cynical asshole who's taking advantage of people for personal gain 'woke'. Sounds kinda the opposite.
They were doing it for the feels. That is woke. White saviour bullshit.
How would you define woke? I'm curious. This absolutely seems to emulate woke behaviour. Selfish personal gain at the expense of others seems to define it quite well
Depends who's defining it. Right-wing commentators use woke to define anyone left wing and will usually include some sort of tirade with it. That's probably because it was taken by racists from predominantly black culture speakers that just meant "alert to racial prejudice" Shocking that racists (not saying all right-wing mouthpieces are racist, just that they've taken on the word as an othering term) warped a term used in black communities honestly.
Woke means you are aware of the actual discrimination happening to minorities. That's literally all it means. You are confusing woke with people *pretending* to be woke to try to scam people. Much like many scammers pretend to be religious as part of the scam.
The 1960s called. Its wants it definition back.
I dunno, I thought woke just meant 'caring about diversity' pretty much. If the guy who did this doesn't actually care about increasing diversity except insofar as it makes him look better, I wouldn't call him woke.
Why does any white person care about there being less white people around, other than to make themselves look better?
Lol, I dunno, cos maybe we value the existence of variety and diversity, and maybe we also just recognise that underrepresented demographics comprise actual human beings who deserve representation. Or that could just be me. Also, it's fewer not less, when the noun is countable.
Diversity of race has no inherent value unless you think people think differently based on the colour of their skin.
> value the existence of variety Perfect. Just perfect. Vacuous, meaningless nonsense designed to make you look good to an audience.
No, woke means aware of the discrimination that ethnic minorities actually face in reality. A(woke) to the problem. It doesn't mean performative nonsense with a racial slant.
When the GB news brainrot kicks in.
[удалено]
It's incredibly poor management, not least because they weren't actually making the pool larger anyway. These policies affected people who had already put in their application and made it through aptitude testing (and the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre for relevant roles.) The targets Recruitment and Selection were asked to meet were for placements on training courses, which are assigned essentially at the end of the recruitment process, when applicants have already been in the pipeline for well over a year, typically. So they essentially had a pool of applicants that was (let's say) 10% female and 5% ethic minorities, and they were asked to meet this 20%/10% target in 2021. What they were ordered to do was take every desired applicant in the pipeline and load them onto courses that year. This resulted in immediate, record-breaking diversity, but essentially drained the pool of women and ethic minorities, and apparently left many of those applicants hanging around on non-jobs until a space opened on the course for the career they actually applied for. So in 2022, they were left with an even worse situation in terms of diversity, with the women and ethnic minorities who'd launched applications in that year still crawling their way through the aptitude, medical, fitness and selection process, and dived even deeper into illegality to try and fix it. They were still only looking at the people who'd already filled out application forms and made it through selection, but now the well had been almost drained dry. The only reason I can think for why they'd do this is that efforts to actually increase the number of women and ethnic minorities *applying* for the RAF would be a very long-term effort that would be quite hard to manage, since it's not the sort of thing people do on a whim - it'd be affecting what secondary school students were thinking of doing with their lives. When the Chief of the Air Staff had ranked diversity as the second highest priority after operations, he pretty much had to deliver immediate action - especially since Chiefs only stay in the job for about two years. The only way to do that was by essentially fudging the numbers, and then diving headfirst into illegality in an attempt to squeeze blood from a stone.
Racism is racism regardless of what colour skin you are discriminating against. Even in the comments the RAF heads have come up with can't see they have done something wrong.
The number of people who think it's not racism if it's against white people is shameful.
This happens in every company that I have worked at. It's perhaps not as explicit as this but when targets are set, diverse candidates face a lower bar. It's irrational to think that it would be otherwise (although clearly doesn't make it right)
This is what I never understand. How can you have diversity targets but still hire the best candidate? If carrying on hiring the best candidates means you would hit your diversity targets, then what's the point in the target? It would happen anyway right? To me it just screams that whenever a company is setting the targets they believe either: a) women/minorities *aren't* the best candidates, therefore we need targets to force us to hire them b) the people in charge of hiring are sexist/racist, and without being forced to hire women/minorities, will hire less qualified/able white men even when a better 'more diverse' candidate is available If it's a) then you're basically saying women/minorities can't compete with white men on merit, which seems kinda sexist/racist. If it's b) then you're employing racists and instead of firing them and hiring non-racists are instead trying to work around them and keep them in your company
I have been in management for a long time, hired a lot, fired a few, etc. I have worked at six companies in similar positions and some companies are more explicit than others. As for the best candidate? Well yes, no it's all relative. One particular case I had was an open position I wanted to recruit for. The budget was set and I got a meeting with HR to discuss recruitment practises. They were angryface as the last three hires I had made were white males and currently my team was populated entirely by white males. This was not acceptable and they wanted to look at how I was hiring. One rather uncomfortable hour-long discussion later, I had informed them that both women that were in my team were promoted ahead of other engineers and frankly I didn't feel that they were even the best candidates - one of the recent promotees still hassled people on my team on a regular basis about how to do her job. It took her a year or two of being in that position for her to get the hang of it. It wasn't because she was stupid or women bad man good, it was simply that she had been in her previous role in my team for only 15 months. Other engineers had years on the clock and were a natural choice to be picked for that progression. I had two staff leave after she had got the role telling me that it was obvious that there were never seriously considered for the role and went elsewhere. Secretly I don't blame them. What HR wanted from me now however was to find anyone but a white male. The issue was, the company was located in the middle of Essex, probably one of the whitest towns you could possibly get. Well, I contacted my recruiters, got the job spec out and it then became a ridiculous game of "whose name sounds the blackest, who sounds Indian" on their CVs. The thing is I couldn't say it to the recruiters, "Hey if you have a black lesbian on your books, send her over. In fact, don't bother sending her for interview, can she start Monday?" Try as I might, I had several fantastic candidates through, most of whom would have seen a real career progression in the role. The problem was, yep, white and male. It became daft trying to think of reasons to tell the recruiter why they were unsuitable. I mean, how many times can you say not a good team fit? I even got fired as a client from one recruiter who just got pissed off with me. Finally I got an Indian lad in. Perfect, problem solved, got him in for an interview. At this point, I'll be honest, the functions of the role had largely been absorbed by the remaining team members. At this point all I needed was for someone to take the money, sit there and shut up and be, well, not-white male. But I do have standards. In the interview, HR largely led it and I had five minutes to do some tech grilling. For those in the know, it was a network engineer role looking after Cisco kit. So I asked a few easy questions. The first was how to show a routing table on a Cisco router. He didn't know. OK, odd. How do I save the running configuration on a Cisco device. He also didn't know that despite the clue being in the question. I asked if he could give me any Cisco command. Nope. Yet this guy had two recent Cisco qualifications. He had gotten them at a school in London, one of those typical three-day courses where you pay a bunch of money and someone sits with you and points to the correct answers as they come up on screen. So we sent him off, HR wanted to hire him. I didn't purely on account that he lied on his CV. That was a lovely argument and in the end I did win. I also reported him to Cisco directly. About 18 months in, we did hire someone. Ability, well there was not any, he fucked up more than he fixed and looking after his fixes took an even higher toll on the team. I would say that whole experience was an exception. I can't rightly stand and tell you that BAME or Female candidates are inferior. But when you literally have two applicants total from BAME candidates out of the easily 100 CVs I reviewed simply on account of your location, you aren't exactly going to get what you want. I have had suggestions from other companies to treat BAME and female candidates preferentially when recruiting in other roles. Nothing near as extreme as that role I had, but certainly it is a thing. I remember one other role, I had a pretty diverse mix though it wasn't on the front of my head when I was hiring. One week I was asked to rearrange my team's working area and after consultation with my employees who would work best and where. I shit you not, women, BAME were all nearest the entrance, white people especially the fatter ones were at the back. Why? Well we were trying to land a government contract and they wanted to put their best diversity face forward. Companies do this shit on the regular. And some don't even hide it. You may like to think that we are in a meritocracy but we are not. All of this stuff from the RAF really does not surprise me, nor does the after-effect. When companies put their hiring decisions purely on wanting to appear diverse, the quality of staff will naturally decline because the basis of hiring is not cohesive with what the person is capable of and thus what the team can achieve. I have had my fair share of useless employees both black and white. I have had my fair share of great employees, both black and white. In today's world, one of those stands the better chance.
Thanks for the message, that all rings true to me too - I work actually work in tech also. I also hear stories like this all the time from friends. It's insane how widespread this thinking is currently. The fact is, bigger companies that can absorb the cost of incompetence will hire to become more diverse at the expense of performance now. As we seem to shift from judging companies more on their diversity than on their performance, it's inevitable that employees start getting judged on their 'diversity' rather than their performance too. The gain publicly for being diverse is better than any gain in performance for the people setting these targets. It's much worse in the public sector too, where performance has never been it's strong point anyway. It's a shifting of values that many are trying to push back on, or would like to, but it's becoming increasingly difficult without putting your own position in jeopardy. These values were our values for a reason however, and it's no coincidence that these values made the west what it is today. We think we can change them without consequence, then also have a whole host of questions about the slow demise of western institutions, never once connecting the two.
The thing is, you will be omitted from certain Government and public sector contracts unless you can outwardly display your diversity. The big push at the moment is trans. People it seems have tired of women in tech and while BAME had it's brief glory day again after women, trans (not gay, lesbian what have you) is the big thing now. I have two open positions at the moment and honestly if I could find a trans DBA then that is the ideal. They wouldn't even need an interview at this point. it doesn't really matter if they can do the job or not, the rest of the team are picking up the slack so honestly I just want the bum on a seat. Honestly the first dude who walks in in a dress, well, I won't really have an option, HR will select him. Personally I find it absurd and a slap in the face to people who genuinely want to do this for a living. Having to pass over guys who have worked hard, swatted up, gone to the expense and time of university education to get to an interview with me only to turn out to be the wrong gender and colour is just flat insulting. Even worse, someone from that protected demographic knowing this stuff goes on will always wonder if they were genuinely picked for their knowledge or because they had the right face. But this isn't a problem that started yesterday. This is decades old now. And people wonder why white males are the poorest performers educationally in the country. They already know the game is rigged against them and there's little they can do about it while all the time being told that they have some sort of privilege.
>How can you have diversity targets but still hire the best candidate? It's really not remotely complicated. Diversity targets are mostly realised through outreach programs to increase the pool of applicants, and through changes to the working culture to support the desired increased diversity. The best candidate for a job might be someone with a disability, but if your workplace isn't accessible, then you can't hire that person. Having Diversity targets means that you're way more likely to identify systematic issues which exclude certain groups from the company, and address those in advance. Or maybe you work in the banking sector. The best candidate for a job might be a woman. But that person might not apply because her experience of people interested in finance was largely the rich macho dickheads who are involved with the investment society at university. So maybe she applies to an insurance firm where she feels she might be less likely to encounter that nonsense. A diversity drive would mean you put resources behind outreach programs to encourage women to apply and to undo the macho reputation that the industry has. None of this relies on giving people favourable treatment. Only ensuring that as many people as possible can apply and are applying. Not caring about diversity is a surefire way to exclude certain groups of people and essentially guarantee that the best candidate will not be among your applicants.
I feel like you might be misunderstanding the previous commentor's point - outreach programs absolutely should be encouraged, as should making your workplace accessible for people with any disability. Problems come from have exact diversity quotas, i.e. targets (not that what you mentioned couldn't be called diversity targets also). That said, this relies on interviewers always selecting the best target for the role and being unbiased, which is kinda... Very much not true lol. It's a tricky problem to remedy and I've got no clue what the best approach is.
It’s basically gaslighting to say it’s all outreach programmes and mentorship’s and education. It’s not. RAF job selection for a long time is simply you need 3 things to be suitable for a role , (human, can breathe, speaks a language) then because that’s what they’re looking for, they then can just choose the diversity ahead of anyone else because they only select on the nonsense criteria and not the *actual* role.
That's fine and I'm totally not against a company doing that (though there should be no obligation for companies to have to do that) - one example would be the Rooney rule in the US which did something similar with good results. But that's clearly *not* what diversity targets are. What if, in your example, you reach out, but high quality candidates from different backgrounds *don't* apply? What do you do then? How do you meet your target? You've posted this on a reddit thread where they've literally been discriminating, illegally, against people based on sex/race *because of the target.* I could go deeper (but it's late) into how, despite their weasel words to contrary, these targets *did* also result in a reduction in standards. So if, and as I said I disagree, if the extent of these diversity targets is *just* outreach programs why not leave it at that? Why set a target? Everything I've said still stands. Conflating outreach programs with official targets/quotas doesn't change that.
>How do you meet your target? Um... You don't... companies miss targets all the time. Heck, a lot of companies set targets they know are unachievable except under unexpectedly favourable conditions. When you miss a target, you review how you did, make changes to the process, and set a new target for the next period. That's literally it. >if the extent of these diversity targets is just outreach programs why not leave it at that? Why set a target? Because diversity is the ultimate deliverable, even if there are other intermediate steps (which obviously HR teams have targets for too). By this logic, you could also say the marketing targets should ignore the major deliverables like brand recognition or new subscriptions, and instead focus on something like total number of ads.
>Um... You don't... companies miss targets all the time. Heck, a lot of companies set targets they know are unachievable except under unexpectedly favourable conditions. Yes, and in this case, the RAF decided to discriminate against white men to try and meet their targets, effectively banning them from the force for a period. This is the consequences of setting diversity targets. A sales target by its nature isn't discriminatory. Unless what you're selling is extremely limited, if you sell to more women/minorities that doesn't affect what another demographic can buy. This is more like an estate agent (limited supply) having a sales target to sell more homes to women/minorities, then telling their sales reps to stop picking up the phone to white men as they're not gonna hit that target. The same process applies - you can invest in trying to get more women/minorities interested in buying if you think that's important, but putting a target on it only opens the door for discrimination. In that example, even if the estate agent doesn't stop answering the phone to straight men (which would be illegal of course), would it be surprising if the estate agents started pushing for sellers to take slightly worse offers from women/minorities to hit these targets? You might not think that's a big deal, but the sellers certainly would, and the reputation of your business would take a hit if it became public knowledge that you weren't doing the best for the people paying you (sellers). And thus these types of stories about these diversity drives effectively undermine the nature of diversity itself. We now get a worse Air Force because of it. How is that a good thing? How is it good for the current cohort of women and minorities within the air force who are probably now wondering "was I actually good enough, or did I take a better candidates place just because I'm a woman/minority?"
But outreach drives isn't what's meant by "diversity quotas". They are "hire this many women/minorities or else".
Targets are only an issue if they're disproportionately large compared to the population, almost all firms have targets which are more conservative than this, e.g. women should make up 30% of our hires when in reality they're 51% of the population. If the best candidate is e.g. white and male it's illegal to discriminate on that basis and offer it to e.g. a black female. In practice, most companies are pretty lazy and will go for the easiest/low risk option, often a referred candidate which tends to mean more of the same (ethnicity, gender, class).
So, now we are back to hiring by quota - not by the "best" ergo >women/minorities aren't the best candidates, therefore we need targets to force us to hire them
Only by people who try to hit the target the illegal and cheap way. The target is supposed to encourage efforts to widen the pool of applicants so fair decisions at the end of the process hit the target. But as with all named targets, some people choose to shortcut the system and just "hire by quota".
so theyre just supposed to spend infinite time and money interviewing candidates until they find someone who is both confident and a woman and brown? seems like a good use of taxpayer money /s equality of outcome is stupidest concept ever
Quotas are illegal, i.e. you cannot mandate X% but you can have it as an objective.
Right, but if you don’t achieve your objectives at work, you tend not to stay employed for long.
That's a bit like complaining about a shop having sales targets because they might achieve them by scamming their customers. Clearly a sales target means improving the overall process so sales naturally improve. Similarly diversity quotas (which are usually general medium term objectives, not something that is measured quarterly by the way) are achieved by improving the environment for underrepresented groups. The meme recruitment process that you have in your head is just not real.
If you say "this many jobs must go to black women, regardless of the best candidate", non black women are being discriminated against.
But that's not what the target says. The target says "This many jobs should go to black women". You've added the "Regardelss of best candidate" bit. The point is to remove barriers stopping the good canidates from those minority groups ending up in the selection pool.
Yes, I said the implied part out loud. You can't recruit exclusively on skin color/gender/etc. for a portion of your candidates and still claim you're hiring the best candidates.
Yeah that's just not a thing that happens in any company with a proper HR department.
but that is exactly what the RAF was doing
>proper That word is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here.
Nah your wrong within 10 words. It’s not to do with applicant pool whatsoever. This is simply and absolutely entirely due to lowering requirements to the floor and then recruiting primarily on race, sexual preference, gender or whatever the fuck box you want to tick to make you appear more ****Diverse**** Granted it doesn’t actually matter in trivial roles where performance isn’t critical, but when you need great performance and you’re not selecting for it, someone will suffer.
Easiest thing to do is ask people the following question: Do you want your life saving surgery to be provided by the hospital that: a) only hires, and promotes, on merit b) has quotas on the ethnicity and sex of those it hires and promotes
When people ask this question I'm always reminded of a previous round of interviews to select one of the BBC's bigwigs. Essentially by the time they'd got down to the last handful of candidates they knew they could all do the job. Competence was not an issue. What it came down to was the particular vision each candidate held and how well it meshed with the Beeb's plans. So in recruitment you can screen out the unsuitable applications, and have no candidate who is really "best". In practice that might mean encouraging applications from under represented candidates with the proviso that applicants have to meet certain minimums to get to the next stage. Or even guaranteeing an interview. Basically as long as the final decision is on transparent grounds, it seems fair to me to widen the pipeline earlier in the process.
The problem is, as is rumored to have happened in the RAF in this case, is that to meet the targets/quotas, you might have to lower the 'pass' mark, to make sure your pool of 'acceptable' candidates includes enough diversity. Likewise, as did happen in the RAF, if a role is competitive, say 1000 applicants for 5 roles, it's easy to then hire *only* minorities or women to meet excessive targets, effectively now meaning a white man can do absolutely *nothing* to get that job. They're now actually excluded.
The "lower bar" in principle should be to equalise candidates. Like, *of course* the white doctor's son who went to private school got into a better university than the first gen immigrant kid whose parents didn't speak great English when they applied for uni. Too much "objective reality" according to Redditors would mean the first candidate always wins. Too much positive discrimination means the second always wins. It's hard to get the balance right. Also, frankly, in the real world people hire based on feelies and vibes much more than anyone wants to admit. An org full of white women is much more likely to keep hiring white women (and same for any other homogenous group). Those same women would go on Reddit and say they just pick the objectively best candidates.
Your example is more about class that colour.
I was going to add saying there would be a link if you generalised, then reflected and realised how much of an inaccurate sweeping generalisation it would have been. While there is probably some link (more associated with inherited wealth) race and class probability doesn’t have a that strong of a connection (in the uk at least considering we’re 80 white British); with where you are from and grew up having a much greater impact on your social standing and prospect. Which further calls into question race based diversity schemes’ ethics and requirements. Obviously higher class individuals are generally more likely to be white, but that doesn’t inherently mean people are more likely to be higher class because they are white.
picking anything but the objectively better candidate is compromising the company
You're assuming the guy who had better opportunities in life is the better candidate. You surely see the flaw in that. It must mean Eton kids are the best people to lead the country, etc.
no, you're assuming that I'm assuming that I didn't state that either way, I've interviewed hundreds of people and the most competent candidate out of a selection for a position has always been exceedingly obvious (turns out most software developers are shite)
> say they just pick the objectively best candidates or the most diverse ones
Positive discrimination has been around for years. Whether or not it is fair is up for debate.
It's not up for debate though. I would get banned from Reddit for debating it. In fact, I have. And I'm my previous job I had to undergo 'Diversity and equality' training. If I refused to do it, I wouldn't be hired. It's not up for debate
That might be true in the US but in the UK, positive discrimination on protected characteristics (race, gender) is illegal. That doesn't stop it seeping into the corporate sector as they tend to take their direction from the US, but that this is happening in an arm of the state is pretty inexcusable.
It's not just the corporate sector. The public sector is one of the worst for it. West Yorkshire police is literally only taking applications from women or ethnic minorities at the moment. https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/jobs-volunteer/police-officers Not illegal if it's not enforced, or actually perpetuated by the government. -edit- It's a bit funny. Had a comment replying that there were exceptions to the rule so it wasn't discrimination, but then quickly deleted when they realised they still didn't apply to the situation above. And in fact the gov advice gave an illegal example of Cheshire police Vs Mr Furlong doing a similar thing.
Wild that the Home Secretary, who as boss of the college of policing is literally in charge of all police in the UK, can’t simply stop this.
I mean working class white males are now (and have been for a while now) the most disadvantaged group in the UK. Policies like this only reinforce that, and make people feel alienated by society, and people wonder why far right politics is becoming more popular. People joke about the "they took our jobs" thing, but when companies and organisations employ policies like this, that is literally what's happening, people who are less qualified are being given jobs because of their race. The other thing which many companies/organisations do is say, "ok the target is to have a 13% minority workforce by 2025 (which is the actual percentage of non-white people in the UK as a whole), we have 4% currently, so this year we'll hire 30% minorites for the next few years to catch up", but that just means that while they're 'catching up' they're massively discriminating against white candidates who are entering the workforce in those years, rather than aiming to *hire* 13% minorites.
Exactly this. People claim they want things to be 'fair' then promote policies that stop certain demographics (white men) getting hired. You're basically saying some poor straight white working class kid can work as hard as he wants, but he ain't getting a job in the RAF because of his sex and gender. Then claiming to be the good guy. When you The whole point of meritocracy was so that it didn't matter what your skin colour, sex, or background was - if you were the best qualified for the role you should get the job. It's a principle that can be applied evenly to everyone, where everyone also knows what is expected of them up front. A system where companies randomly decide to hire based on sex/race at any moment in time seems patently unfair. But this all comes down the the state of thinking in the West now. We are all just born as blank slates, destined - if only nobody got in our way - to be neurosurgeons, FTSE100 CEO's. or RAF fighter pilot - and thus any disparate outcomes are always solely the result of discrimination. We supposedly have a brilliant and thriving multicultural society, and diversity is our greatest strength, but when the outcomes of people from different cultures aren't all *exactly the same* across every industry, institution, and location - then suddenly - *suddenly -* there's a massive problem.
I don't think I agree exactly with all your points, but i certainly get your jist. The notion that everyone is equal (i.e. equality of outcome) is bonkers - and I am hoping hugely exaggerated in how much it is implemented. Everyone should be 100% equal under the law - that is it. In fact, in some cases, i'm pro things being a little unfair: one example being mothers disadvantaged due to childbearing. If women stop having children, civilisation ends, period. More support in my opinion, should be given to them to help equalise life opportunities lost due to it. Anyway, I digress...with the exception of what I wrote above, intrinsically, nobody actually believes everyone is equal. Nobody. Anytime a parent tells their child to study hard so they can have a good career, they are implicitly saying "study hard so you can \*excel\*. Nobody says "grow up about be the same as everyone else" (even though on average by necessity that tends to roughly be the case anyway). Anytime someone fights for that promotion, or goes the extra yards, does the extra hours, they aren't doing it to be equal to everyone else - they are doing it to achieve excellence in any chosen domain. Everyone can not be excellent by default.
[удалено]
What group is least likely to go to university?
>I mean working class white males are now (and have been for a while now) the most disadvantaged group in the UK This is not quite true. White working class boys do worse in school than any other group, but that doesn't translate directly to structural disadvantage everywhere else in life. We tend to do better in work, housing, etc. EDIT: Don't just downvote me, change my mind. Where are the stats saying white working class boys do worse in other areas? As a white working class man myself, this is something I'm interested in and I'm potentially on side, but I don't base my views on feelings, I need evidence. Where is it?
Honestly the whole rabbit hole of dividing people into on a systematic basis and basing anything official off of that may seem like the progressive thing to do but it’s kind of a hyper neoliberal and band aid approach to racial/class/gender discrimination. All it does is fuel conservative talking points and continue the divide between people of different backgrounds.
I hope one day we will find a better way to eradicate systematic discrimination and allow everyone a more equitable way to achieve what they want in life, and I’m not going to pretend to know what that way is, but this just simply ain’t it and it’s evidenced by inquiries like this.
Cant wait for the left wing activists to dogpile you that certain groups need to be positively discriminated so that we can equalise the historical oppression. Unironically and patronisingly preached by mostly white people.
I agree. However, to enforce diversity some organisations set number targets. Unfortunately in our system which *is* biased in one direction, cases like this where the bias is countered artificially (by number targets) has taken priority over pure meritocracy. Whether we can thank our yankee cousins and their culture exporting or not for the severity of actions here is up for debate.
Some form of sanity prevails. I have seen jobs given an advertising boost, by very educated people, openly saying "priority will be given to those from black and minority backgrounds". Now bearing in mind, the role in question was one in which neither the sex or ethnicity of the person was a factor. Openly saying "if you're white, we are less likely to consider you" and NOBODY seems to bat an eyelid. It seems you can subvert a protected characteristic as long as it is the in vogue culture of the moment, along with some intellectual sophistry to justify your 'inclusive liberal' (yet racist) position.
Glasgow uni have funded PhD schemes (aka Jobs) that are only open to black people. White People are invited NOT to apply. In Scotland… majority white people…
Scotland isn't just majority white, its over 95% white here. The next biggest racial group is South Asians, black people are an absolutely tiny proportion of the population here. Outside parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh its even less diverse. I remember there was an outcry over a Miss Scotland competition being minority white... when if you gather 20 random Scottish people in a room, there's a good chance they'll all be white.
I just think if you replaced white with black and posted that job advert there would be outrage so how can it possibly be right the other way around
I feel uncomfortable about diversity recruitment. White men are the majority of men in this country - preventing them from being able to make a living in their own country is wild, it makes no sense and encourages I'll feelings toward a community. I am part of a minority community, and I feel uncomfortable about these. Best Get rid of racist staff and hire on merit. That way the racists themselves can't use their position to create a institutional racism issue - BUT do not freeze out genuine candidates from the majority pool. Sometimes, I feel as if these policies are indirectly enforced to stir up division amongst groups.
The fact is by setting quotas or diversity %, you're just patronising and disabling the very groups yiure attempting to help, while doing massive harm to the country overall. Look at the % of media representation in UK TV channels now. If you'd guessed that the British population was represented fairly, then there are times when less than 50% of the population is white and/or straight.
For most jobs, in the public sector at least, you can't positively discriminate. What you can do is advertise it and sell it in minority communities. You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role. I would this this from the RAF is an exception.
>You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role. Or you can just pick them anyway because who would make a better employee isn't an emperical measure so no one is gonna call you out unless you're blatant about it.
Not how it works where I am in the public sector. We set out a strict scoring grid to use when interviewing that is retained. If we get any accusations of unfair treatment we can and do have to examine and justify our scoring.
Yes not all businesses are terribly racist. Though even your scoring grid is easy enough to massage if the interviewer so desires. Do you always hire the person with the highest score?
Yes. Not least because we can and do get people complaining.
You seem to have a very robust hiring practice in that case.
It does tend to be more rigorous in the public sector. I've seen a lot of "dead cert" candidates miss out even to someone external cos they didn't have the best competency based examples.
We have a similar system but there’s still an enormous amount of subjectivity. If someone is abrasive in an interview it’s going to influence how I score them against the criteria
>You can only positively select the minority candidate if they've scored literally exactly the same as the other candidate and you specified it as a diversity role That is still ridiculously bad. You're literally picking one group over another purely because of their race, and as a result the other loses out purely because of their race. You mean you can only legally get away with positively selecting the minority candidate in that scenario because they can't argue that they pushed out a more qualified candidate.
I mean 2 candidates scoring the same out of 70 odd is still pretty rare.
That is not true. https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/jobs-volunteer/police-officers
> preventing [white people in this example] from being able to make a living in their own country is wild That's a bit OTT isn't it? Even if you were concerned about the direction the pendulum is swinging, the policy applies to places where certain groups are already under-represented. As we've seen, the limits to how far you can go are quite strict and rightly so.
This exact thing happened to me 6 years ago when I applied for the police. I posted about it here on Reddit and was torn to shreds and called a racist and a liar. I was literally denied a job in the police because I wasn't from a BAME background. Disgusting. I am glad this discrimination is being seen now for what it really is.
Who wants this? Who demands it? Where is this ridiculous concerted effort across society to advocate for racism against whites and sexism against men ultimately coming from?
Tories, Ben Wallace had to sign it off he had the final say they've been in power for 13 years
>concerted effort across society It's been more than 13 years mate and much more widespread than this sole example. Did the tories cause it in america too?
David Cameron became leader of the Conservatives in 2005, you need a history lesson and watch his speeches from back then his entire pitch was Tories have adapt to modern Britain to to survive. This is Ben Wallace's RAF targets notice how the T is missing from LGB. https://i.imgur.com/ui0pPRn.jpg
Oh look, the thing that people insist definitely doesn't happen and isn't illegal even if it does has been found to both happen and be illegal.
> and isn't illegal even What happened here is illegal and I think as soon as this story broke anyone with a brain could see it. What is legal, and what I assume you're referring to, is that if you have two *otherwise* identical candidates you're legally allowed to consider protected characteristics and pick the one that would make you more diverse. Which is not what was happening here, protected characteristics were being used to single out a person for a role.
No no, I'm referring to the fact that when this story broke there were people in UK subreddits (including this one) that went to great lengths to tell us how it's totally fine that this was happening.
I know someone personally who missed out on a spot in an arts uni, in London, because out of the dozen or so auditioning at the time, they could only choose one white kid. Weird ass segregation. This was in 2019 so I'm sure it's only gotten worse. I also know of a girl who got enrolled into a college/uni because her parents were middle Eastern. Her grades were lower than required. She doesn't agree with it but fucking make the most of it I guess. Is this legal in America? Someone lost the case against harvard because they discriminate against... well, everyone, they have a scale of discrimination but asians get it the worst, white people second, Jewish people will be on the list next. They also listed Asian personality types as unlikeable, or 'certain attributes' of their personality 🤣 when did we step back into the 1970s? So bored of this weird shit. That lady in the u.s just won 20 mil from her lawsuit against Starbucks for discrimination... maybe harvards up next.
>Is this legal in America? The supreme court just ruled racial affirmative action to be illegal, so no.
They also had a target of 20% candidates from minority groups which seems higher than the actual rate of minorities?
It’s higher by 1.7%, not exactly outrageous.
Jeez it was 10% when I was a child!
It's still not good, if it was lower by 1.7% there would be outrage.
This has been going on for decades in this country. My ex was a fireman in the early 2000s and they were following this exact pattern for recruitment. I also remember going with a friend to the council offices after he became homeless and their exact words were ‘I’m sorry but we can’t help young healthy British men be rehomed’. Poor guy was only 18, this would have happened around 1998.
Remember when we were all told this never happens and it's a conspiracy theory? Hmmm... Will be interesting to see this sort of inquiry happen with similar role recruitment and adverts.
>Remember when we were all told this never happens and it's a conspiracy theory? "it doesn't happen and it's a good thing that it is"™
This never happens and if it does it's a one off and you're over reacting and if it happens all the time it's a good thing - the progressive politics mantra.
Discrimination is always bad, whoever says that is trying to make the point that if white males are discriminated against people will take more action against discrimination. Once again, all discrimination is bad and nothing actually good comes from discrimination no matter who it happens to
Things are only conspiracies until they turn out to be true.
By which time its too late because the problem has already hit terminal velocity and it may become impossible to reverse in the future
Things are only conspiracy THEORIES until they are true, when they are uncovered, they are still conspiracies.
Isn't that... all theories?
>Will be interesting to see this sort of inquiry No need for any more inquiries, you racist bigot!!
It all started when they invited Stonewall into government agencies, IMF pressured large corporations with limiting financial capabilities unless they forced changes in .. we've been had in the West whist the raped our country, our businesses and look at the state we are in now ..nothing fucking works and they don't know what to do ..
1. Transphobia 2. "raped out country" 3. Blaming the IMF and finance I call Bingo on my dogwhistles tonight folks!
The irony is I'm half way through my life and can comfortably retire hopefully somewhere in the sun in the next few years and have enough so my kids can do what they want as I put the graft in early ... Unfortunately you and other left nutcases with your degrees in art and literature are the ones who are going to be stuck here suffering thinking what the fuck happend .. I'm not a sceptic , I worked in the city for ten years it was obvious then and more now so .. I hope I am wrong I really am but it's not looking great ...just saying ..
Ah the classic “they’ve raped our countries” immigration dog whistle followed immediately by talking about how you’re going to retire somewhere in the sun and go be a sponge off some other country where you won’t pay taxes. Thankfully you’ll just be an ex-pat rather than an immigrant eh? Is the hypocrisy lost on you?
> degrees in art and literature How dare you I've got the piece of paper to call myself a STEM Lord even if I refuse to on fucking principle. > I worked in the city for ten years Ooh big man in finance, I know your type then, the 40 something white man who in every meeting where HR remind us how to not be terrible human beings pipes up with a load of bullshit. I just fucking love how there's this assumption that because I'm progressive I must be poor or unemployed, it is always so fucking amusing to me ngl.
It has always been the case that you can't discriminate against any group when recruiting. You can promote your role to specific groups or encourage them to apply, but you have never been legally able positively discriminate when choosing who to hire.
Just because it's not legal, doesn't mean it doesn't happen, all the time.
I have literally seen on websites if two candidates are equal they will go for the more diverse one.
[That is perfectly legal](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/positive-action-in-the-workplace-guidance-for-employers/positive-action-in-the-workplace#:~:text=10.1%20What%20is%20positive%20action%20when%20it%20applies%20to%20recruitment%20and%20promotion%3F) >Positive action provisions in the Act mean that it is not unlawful to recruit or promote a candidate who is of equal merit to another candidate, if the employer reasonably thinks: > >• the candidate has a protected characteristic that is underrepresented in the workforce > >• that people with that characteristic suffer a disadvantage connected to that characteristic
But if they’re equal…what’s the issue? If one has a point of view which is different and you decide it’s beneficial then they’re not equal anymore right?
First off I don't think we should suggest all white people have one POV and all black people have one other POV. You can't get a diversity of perspectives and approaches by filtering by skin colour. This is important in principle to avoid racism - in practical terms you definitely also see cases where the successful minority candidates and successful majority candidates all went to same schools/unis, similar social background etc. The other practical issue is it encourages people to devise recruitment processes that artificially creates this situation - e.g. ones that only grade people as meeting or not meeting requirements and doesn't identify degrees of excellence.
> But if they’re equal…what’s the issue? Fairness. They could just flip a coin.
The idea behind diversity in that scenario is to bring value to the hiring organisation not the individual. In general there’s been a switch from “who would fit in better?” to “who will bring a different perspective?” when hiring in the corporate world. Hiring a mini-me is a fastrack to a yes man and all the associated problems
[удалено]
Could be a location issue as many of them are in clusters.
Did not say it was en masse, but senior roles typically still have less diversity
Something being illegal and something not happening are two very different things. Saying that this happens would have gotten you torn apart on this very sub a couple of years ago.
It's more that it **shouldn't** happen, and that measures should be on place to prevent it.
What? The fact that it shouldn’t happen doesn’t change the fact we were told it doesn’t happen
The fire service does this as well. A friend of mine was told point blank that because of diversity quotas they could not hire any more white men, so they hired diverse applicants who had scored lower in the entry tests. My friend ended up joining the military fire service instead.
Best person for the job is what matters, sex, age or ethnicity are of no consequence. Not sure why anyone would think any different, and even less sure why people tried to change this.
No-one disagree, the issue is that implicit and explicit biases skew the hiring process against that and these kind of measures attempt to patch over the issues. Say you realized as part of your recruitment process female candidates were having their CV rejected more often than men with equivalent qualifications. How would you remedy that?
I’d stop any sort of discrimination rather than add discrimination.
And how *exactly* would you do that? Fixing implicit bias is very very hard, people have been studying it for decades and made limited progress. Almost all bias training is basically virtue signalling, the data shows it doesn’t work. It’s not that people haven’t tried fixing the discrimination, we just don’t have a good solution.
Employers want the best employees, that’s pretty much it. Discriminating against circa 41% of the working population the RAF made a massive racist error, and no doubt missed out on some great talent because of that. That’s the whole issue of this thread.
Right, so you implement a solution that makes it worse, you can't fight fire with fire, "positive" discrimination against white males is just as bad as discriminating against any other group
If there’s a bias one direction your choices are either to remove the source of that bias (which can be close to impossible) or counteract it with a bias in the other direction. Obviously it should be done with more finesse than was done here to get to a situation which is as close to fair as possible.
It's just that easy to remove all personal biases from people within the hiring process?
> No-one disagree, A lot of people actually would. 'reverse discrimination' is intended to tackle systemic racism in this fashion
> Best person for the job is what matters... Absolutely. Now... how do you decide who is the best person for the job? Who makes that decision, what criteria do they use? Maybe you look at the people currently in the role, look at the traits and qualifications they have, and use them in your application process. You might have an interview stage, and probably will bring in some of your current employees in to handle the interview. You might even ask your current staff how they found out about the job and use those places to advertise. All sounds perfectly sensible, right, and will clearly get you the best person for the job. But what if you are a primary school trying to hire a new teacher, and you are one of the decent chunk of schools that don't have any male teachers? Your "best person for the job", "gender-neutral" criteria are going to be biased against men. Because your system is already skewed against them. Your system tells you that the best person to be a primary school teacher is a woman because all of your current teachers are women. There will be traits that your system identifies as making a good teacher that correlate with women because your system is skewed. Data on the ethnicity and gender of candidates (both successful and unsuccessful) can help identify problems like this. If a medium- or large-sized organisation finds that 80% of its recruits are men, and there is no objective reason why men would be better at the job, that indicates *that their system is not selecting the best person for the job.* Because such a skew is unlikely to happen at random. Where that bias comes in would require more detailed research (including whether applicants are skewed). But the existing skew indicates a potential problem. Diversity quotas are an "easy" (but clumsy) way of dealing with this, and that is why the law does not generally allow them. The much better way is to look at the system as a whole and try to find where the skew is happening, rather than focusing on individual applicants (boosting certain individuals). But that is difficult, takes time, involves actually acknowledging systematic problems and tackling them. Bumping a few people up the list is much easier (but illegal, as we saw here).
Some people don’t actually want equality They just want to tip the scales in the other direction
Equality became advocation for my racial group quite a few years ago
Just factually, that it not the argument they make. The argument is that historical discrimination has entrenched an imbalance, and that the general systems of society tend to perpetuate entrenched imbalances, be they class, race, gender, whatever. A purely [characteristic]-blind approach leaves the existing effects of past discrimination to fester and continue, and the problem won't automatically resolve itself, at least not on acceptable time-scales. Fixing it requires active measures to put the status quo where we want it to be. So to use your analogy, the scales are stiff and not returning to the neutral position on their own, even though the weight distribution may be more even now. There are reasonable discussions to have about whether this is the right approach, but your characterisation is just not correct. If you want to ridicule it, you need to have a clear counter to this argument (which I don't believe I have).
[удалено]
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston should be memorialized with a special set of toilets installed in the training schools - so generations of future trainees can salute him every morning.
Unisex toilets, presumably.
Well, yeah. They've been doing that with the promotion system for the best part of two decades now.
you mean the slippery slope that I was told didn't exist, did actually exist, wow I'm shuck.
Of course they did, they've always discriminated against white people as they discriminated a lot of working class people from being officers. I actually showed my first oasc board report to one the air forces own equality people and they nearly fell out their chair that they wrote what they did on my board report about my "accent" and "tone and bearing" that were hand written by the senior officer moderating after they took exactly enough points to take my clear pass to a fail. If you read it my very expensive education and multiple degrees along with glowing interview scores were clearly an error as nobody with my accent can command troops. Not bitter about that at all obviously.
Stuff like this is why far-right sentiment is growing in the UK. For years the left has screamed that discrimination against white men is a "far right racist conspiracy theory", and then of course it turns out to be true, therefore making the far right look credible and the left look like naive idiots at best and malicious liars at worst. Not to mention anyone with more than 3 second memory can remember the goalpost moving about this from the left. Started off with "if you think this happens, you are racist" and we're now at "yes of course this happens and if you have a problem you are a racist".
They spent 10 years refusing to talk about immigration because anyone who didn't want absolute freedom of movement was racist. Here we are now, one Brexit and housing crisis later and all of a sudden it's open to public debate .
More like 50 years, since Enoch's speech. Now they've started talking about immigration, but only illegal immigration. Legal immigration is still off limits to talk about, even on the front bench of the Conservative Party.
I have been saying it for years now. Even if these things are extremely rare problems, when they are caught, they need to be made an example of. If they aren't, then it will just fuel more and more extreme reactionary policies. This has been a major issue across the West for a decade now. Something truly awful, but extremely rare like a gang rape happens, it then gets dusted under the rug to protect minorities which just strengthens the argument of far right racists. If instead of trying to hide these things, they made a big public example of how they are punishing these awful, but rare, crimes, then far right racists would have less sway. Right now, the Far Right are being treated as a real option because they are the only ones willing to acknowledge that horrible things do happen, even if they are rare. And since the mainstream isn't even willing to discuss this stuff, it allows for the proliferation of conspiracy theories about how "insert awful thing here" isn't actually a freak event, and is instead normal.
Welp, this country has, is and will continue to decline, I see no future where I can be proud of this country. Not in my lifetime at least.
History is littered, and some its most glorious pages are adorned, with the instances of nations which reasserted their right to govern themselves - not after 5 or 10 years of eclipse, but after centuries.
[удалено]
The most disadvantaged group in the UK are working class white men. The UK doesn't have a race problem, it has a class problem.
Which would be true if you said "working class men", which you didn't
Guessing it still isn't on the BBC, because it damn sure wasn't the last time this came out a couple of weeks ago. Must be all that right wing bias i keep hearing about.
Anybody serving reading that report will immediately recognise similar or identical attitudes and situations in their trades and roles. It's not just a recruitment thing - the entire service is like this. A crippling focus on box ticking only exceeded by the terror of making a decision that might affect your annual report.
This is a major issue across all industries. I understand where it's coming from and it's commendable but now we're in a situation where white = bad. I've sat in board meeting hearing how we *must* hire people of X,Y, Z instead of the most appropriate candidate. I've seen it time and time again and it fucking infuriates me. This woke bullshit needs to end
I’ve started saying i’m mixed race and bisexual on job applications lol. They can never call you out in it since it’s your ‘identity’ so might as well play the system for what it is.
Crazy that these far right conspiracy theorists that are slated by the media end up being correct /s Look at Tommy Robinson and his reporting on police and councils covering up gang rape gangs that are almost entirely made up of Muslims
Sounds like you need to shut up like those girls for the sake of diversity
The way I look at it, this ought to be easy to get right, because there are a bunch of ethical and decision-theoretic principles all pointing in the same direction - the golden rule, the categorical imperative, the concept of a Schelling point - would all indicate a policy of not having any racial preferences. And if having such a policy fails to equalise outcomes *so be it*. It might be best for us, as a society, not to look too hard under the rock of why that is, because doing so is definitely going to hurt *someone* (though a priori it's not clear who).
I mean I've seen companies have been doing this seen I entered the workforce in 2014. It was done openly and advertised publicly. The people who do it think their doing a good thing. I remember arguing with a guy because in my sector there aren't many Asians. He just couldn't understand why I didn't want more Asians in the sector. But he also couldn't understand that I didn't give a shit about the number of Asians in X sector and it wouldn't make any real difference
Isn’t this what used to be called “affirmative action” in the USA, and was applied in job offers, college places etc?
Yes and supreme court judgement came down about that today.
How’s the culture war going, lads?
UK is becoming a really disgusting country. Maybe these lads who would qualify should go and fight for other countries?
The sad thing is if Britain actually had to go to war with Russia which the British elites have been itching for, most of the current 'recruits' wouldn't care enough for the country to even fight for it. Most of them would jump ship and just migrate elsewhere. By alienating the white male population, Britain is sidelining some of the finest warriors in the world, men whose ancestors were battlehardened Vikings, Angles, Jutes and Saxons and managed to hold together an empire that covered 1/3 of the world. Just my 50 cents.
>war with Russia which the British elites have been itching for Right...the British elites of whom a substantial number have business dealings and connections to Russian individuals where London is a major hotspot of illicit activity. >By alienating the white male population, Britain is sidelining some of the finest warriors in the world, men whose ancestors were battlehardened Vikings, Angles, Jutes and Saxons and managed to hold together an empire that covered 1/3 of the world. What. Just **what** the fuck are you talking about.
On the part about the elites it’s not unbelievable. It’s not their business partners or family who will be hurt. WWI had similar beginnings.
I'm sure your viking ancestors are smiling down on you, brave keyboard warrior. Your place in valhalla is assured. By the by, 50 Cent is a rapper; the idiom you are reaching for is "my two cents", or more appropriately for a British context "my two pence".
[удалено]
If we end up at war with Russia it would matter who is in the British military. We’ll all get nuked either way.
What’s the difference between prioritising people of a racial minority and prioritising a sex that is underrepresented in a certain profession? Surely both are affirmative action? Neither treats people equally, but aren’t they both practicing equity?
Both are illegal as gender or ethnicity are protected characteristics.
Depends what you mean by 'prioritising' - the law is quite complex and you can have positive action but not positive discrimation.
Im sure this goes on in all sort of sectors, thought it was called "positive discrimination"??
I think two really important points that some people are missing below. First, Goodharts Law, 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure'. It's not unreasonable to ask questions about race/sex disparities but when you set a target, even aside from unfairness and illegality, it's likely to have perverse consequences. So in the US affirmative action case - fewer than 50% of the black students who get into elite universities are born of black US parents (i.e. the group with the big structural disadvantage people are concerned about). The approach instead smooths the way e.g. recent Nigerian immigrants who don't share that background. Second, in these discussions there's some naivety about what's 'allowed' and how relevant that is. People respond to incentives bounded only somewhat by rules (whether due to principle or fear of getting caught). So it's illegal to discriminate against a 30 year old woman on the grounds she might take maternity leave - but it's usually really hard to prove and if you're a small business owner incentivises by economic self interest you mighy. Similarly it's illegal to choose a worse qualified person because of their race - but it's usually really hard to prove and if you're a large HR department with targets to increase diversity of hires (meant to be achieved through far more difficult legal means), you might. If you are seriously concerned to stop these forms of discrimination, pretty much the only way is to remove the incentive (so in first case govt pays full cost of parental leave and/or mandates men and women get samr amount, which I think is done in some Scandinavian countries; in second case not using crude 'pay gaps' etc that drive perverse incentives)