The cocoon of diversity

In my lifetime the cause of civil rights has transformed the lives of millions in what we now call 'minorities'. From the gradual liberation of women and allowing gay people to actually live free lives through to the insistence on equal treatment for people with different skin colours, we live in a very different, and more civilised, society than we did when I was born.

I also know that prejudice continues - from the laughable idea that someone can't be English because they've a slightly darker skin through to the casual way in which women, gay people and the disabled are excluded. In some ways what we do goes too far - positive discrimination tends to favour those individuals from minorities who probably need the least help and the straightjacket of 'protected characteristics' leaves some groups facing prejudice without recourse to the protection offered to others.

Now the problem is that, with all this placing of people into discrete groups - ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual preference, age - we have allowed groupthink to take over with the result that far from an inclusive, united and open society we have one characterised by self-segregation, exclusion and mistrust. A sort of self-imposed apartheid is growing from this corrupted soil:

Robert Lopez, a spokesman for the university, confirmed to The College Fix that the students’ demand for housing specifically for black students had been met, saying that the school’s new Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community “focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory.”

What sort of world have we come to where intelligent, educated young people want to segregate themselves from others purely on the basis of their skin colour? Don't get me wrong here - if a bunch of black students (or for that matter brown, yellow, red or white students) choose to live together that's entirely their business. But to demand, as students at California State University in Los Angeles did, that the college authorities set aside a place purely for this purpose is to make diversity a protective cocoon rather than a chance to realise that all those other folk - men, women, gay, straight, black, white, able-bodied, disabled - are just other human beings.

This process of segregation - shocking given the history of racial oppression in the USA - is spreading across college campuses even to the extent of segregated induction and segregated staff:

UW-Madison’s Multicultural Student Center held meetings separated by race July 11. “The center held two distinct sets of ‘processing’ meet-ups. First, two ‘processing circles,’ one for white staff and another for non-white staff, were held in the morning, followed by racially separated ‘processing meet-ups’ for students in the evening,”

It seems that, far from seeking engagement in society, a section of black America is trying to create parallel structures and organisations simply to prevent any risk of 'microaggressions' resulting from sharing space with white people. This attitude is not only very disturbing but, worse still, acts to reinforce the unpleasant view that black people don't want to be part of wider American society. Put simply, all the work done - from Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King onwards - to get a society where minorities have equal rights is unfurling as these students, indulged by college authorities, recreate a world where group characteristics like skin colour, gender or disability are what defines a person not the 'content of their character'. And rather than this being a consequence of others prejudice it is rather the desire of these groups to avoid any place where words or actions might offend - a cocoon of diversity.

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Quote of the day - on groupthink and identity politics

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David Paxton writing in an online magazine, Quillette:

The reason I don’t have much optimism for my argument is that those under the spell of identity politics are not seeking to end the fallacious thinking that causes racism, sexism or any other such thing. They merely seek to adopt it themselves to affect power dynamics. Upon dividing people into groups they then seek to achieve equality of outcome across them without realising that if there is a problem of discrimination in society, the principle of grouping people in such ways tends to be the cause.

The whole article is an excellent challenge to the idea of groupthink - I've written about this before, pointing out that our modern idea of diversity depends on putting us into boxes, on allocating us to groups.

However, there is a fundamental objection to the idea of “diversity” as practiced and promoted – it depends on us being defined solely by the groups of which we are (by choice, by birth or by accident) a member – or worse still to which we are allocated by the merchants of diversity. Someone isn’t an individual – they are Afro-Caribbean, LGBT, over-50, working-class, disabled, Jewish – only given identity through the mediation of a group.

So “diversity” as we see it in practice is focused on there being diverse groups rather than diverse individuals. The reality of our thoughts, ideas, loves, prejudices, opinions and attitudes – real diversity – are as nothing beside the squeezing of everyone into a pre-determined set of boxes.

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Can we stop getting so hysterical about migration. Mostly it's a good thing.

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It is the end of days. As the hangovers fade in the New Year it will be to witness the spectacle of vast hordes trooping off planes, trains and boats clasping evidence of EU citizenship as proof they can work in our fine nation.

Under “transitional” rules introduced when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, migrants from these two countries can only work in the UK in seasonal jobs such as fruit picking, or if they are self-employed.

These restrictions end on January 1, 2014, and all Romanians and Bulgarians will then have the same rights to work in the UK as British citizens.

The model predicts that over the next five years from January 1 at least 385,000 migrants will move from Bulgaria and Romania – more than the population of Coventry. 

Swamped! Swamped I tell you - the pressures on our creaking public services will be too great, the schools won't have the places, the hospitals will be filled with the grannies of Roma and Bulgar migrants and we'll spend our lives speaking some sort of pidgin English.

Even if I was to accept that there'll be 385,000 arrivals from Bulgaria and Romania, I really don't believe that a country with 70 million people - 200 times that number - can't welcome some new arrivals. For sure, I want to know who is coming in and that they're doing something constructive. I'm all for putting them on a plane back home if they misbehave. But can we have a little less hysteria please?

If we want to challenge in that big bad ugly world - to compete in that ghastly "global race" some folk want to believe in - then we need migration. We need Brits to go an work in France, in Dubai and in Hong Kong. And to retire to Spain, Ireland or Florida. These international connections, the British diaspora is a vital component in our economy, in creating the links with the rest of the world we'll need for future trade and prosperity.

This works both ways. Those Romanians, Bulgarians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Russians, Somalis - all those immigrants we're so rude about - their links home generate new economic activity and benefit our nation. Not because of cheap labour or a willingness to accept the bending of employment rules but because diversity is essential to economic growth:

It is important to note how this ‘[population] churn’ helps cities. Knowledge-based economies run on the quality of ideas. Ideas are not only a function of intelligence or education, but also the depth of information a person, or a city, receives.

London is successful because it is diverse. And it has always been diverse.

So I'm with Sam Bowman from the Adam Smith Institute on this - more free movement is a benefit not a curse:

There are lots and lots of bad things governments do that ruin people’s lives. But few cause as much harm to the poorest people as the state controls of where people can work and live that we call ‘migration policy’. Even a marginal step towards a more liberal immigration policy would allow people to create an enormous amount of wealth, and probably do more good than almost any other possible policy. 

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...and it rained

We gather, all looking a little ragged, tousled, perhaps a mite hung-over. Tom’s late with the leaflets, the clouds rolling across the Bradford skies are that dark, steel grey colour – the colour of rain.

Another weekend, another delivery of leaflets – this time with the headline screaming; “union bosses on the rates”. Telling the good folk of Bradford how their council prefers to fund Labour’s mates in the trades unions instead of keeping open libraries, swimming pools and centres for disabled adults.

The price of politics in a place like Bradford – opaque, secretive decision-making where Labour leaders gather in private cabal to spend huge sums, great wads of other people’s cash, on their favoured schemes, their preferences and, of course, on making sure important Labour-voting blocs are protected.

And I guess those Labour-voting blocs don’t include the old lady in Denholme who wouldn’t have a library had not the Town Council and local volunteers taken over running it. Those blocs exclude a different woman now denied the chance to swim close to home as Labour close down the last swimming pool in Bradford’s inner city.

But those blocs do include town hall union bosses. So the union bosses get their money.

We gather, smiling at a little gallows humour, at the prospects of further years of deadening Labour rule in our great city. A return to those years – I call them the “years of complaint” – when the City’s Labour rulers admitted to no power in running the City, moaned about how government elsewhere was the cause of our problems and create a self-image of supplication. The image of a broken, failed city.

I glance at the back of the leaflet. “Positive Bradford” it proclaims – let’s talk the City up, focus on our strengths, on the exciting things that happen in business, in the arts and among our citizens. A message the City needs but, I fear, a message that will be drowned out by Labour’s obsession with victim status – wallowing in the deprivation as if it were some badge of achievement. A City whose leader proclaims with, it seems, every public announcement that he represents one of England’s poorest communities.

An admission of failure – of the pointlessness of Labour’s political mission, a drear, negative and depressing mission to drag us down to a lowest common denominator. Snidely looking at successful places in the City, suggesting that they succeed at the expense of other places and must be punished – services closed, funding withdrawn.

And as we deliver those leaflets – a promise of a City that takes command of its own destiny, that stops looking elsewhere for a salvation that never comes, that smiles a little. We deliver to back-to-back houses accessed down damp stone-lined passages leading to a little oasis of colour and hope. We drop leaflets into the letter boxes of the semi-detached suburban homes, some cared for and loved, some showing signs of the economic struggle that ordinary people face. And we call at the old folks flats and bungalows filled with people looking back on a tough life lived well.

We see a bit of a great city. We get a glimpse of its variety – Pakistani mums, the broad Irish-looking faces of older people, the Polish shop and the black man in a suit stood on the corner seemingly uncertain as to whether to cross. A variety that has always been there, that’s part of the City’s success. But now, trapped in the weasel words of “community cohesion” and “diversity”, it is a variety our leaders see as a problem, something to be managed, worried about, endlessly debated and turned into strategies that serve only to justify a purposeless intervention into the lives of ordinary people.

We delivered those leaflets, we met people who smiled and we had our little say about the way our City should be run.

And it rained.

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Look, it was a mistake. It was quite funny. Why all the fuss?

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I thought Liverpudlians prided themselves on a sense of humour, on an appreciation of the ridiculous. Well I guess that the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital isn't managed by scousers - although it seems to employ them:

The advert, on the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital's website, invited applications for a trainee anaesthetist.

But it concluded by stating: "Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc".

Any one who's worked in HR (or in advertising) will know exactly how this came about. And the person responsible will get a bollocking and will bore friends, colleagues and relations for ever with the story (suitably embellished).

However the management have got all po-faced. Rather than have a laugh, say "it's a mistake, sorry folks", they had this to say:

"The wording on this advert in no way reflects the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust's position in relation to equal opportunities, to which it is fully committed.

"The trust is conscious of its duty to promote equality and is a Stonewall Diversity Champion employer.

"The trust will be conducting an investigation into this incident to ensure that this cannot happen again."

For heaven's sake, grow a sense of humour will you.
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Offended?

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I've never been Doug Stanhope's biggest fan but he's right on this (except perhaps the trip to Reno):

There is no such thing as laughing at something you shouldn’t. You should laugh everywhere you can find even the slightest glimmer of humour. Life is a series of heartache, tragedy and injustice, punctuated by a few cocktails and that one trip to Reno. The more you can laugh at the ugliest parts, the better off you are.

Go and read the rest (and try not to be offended, OK?)

h/t that annoying moggie

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Equalities Stakeholders. Yes, they're out there messing up your health service again!

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My meanderings brought me to this blog post entitled, "Where do equality stakeholders fit in the new NHS Landscape." Not sure whether it should have had a question mark at the end or not but it reminded me just how distant from normal understanding of common sense the 'diversity' and 'equalities' agenda has got:

According to Minister, Andrew Lansley, the changes he proposes to bring about in the NHS will put patients at the centre of everything the NHS does.

That's a bold claim, which should be seen in the context that NHS organisations like the 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and the ten (regional) Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) have specific statutory obligations to consult with the public, plus obligations (as public sector bodies) under the past and future Public Sector Equality Duties.

This is followed by a jolly diagram showing us how the new system operates - with different colours, arrows and fine names. But - so far as anything within this jargon-laden and confusing little piece is clear - the writer's argument is that "equalities stakeholders" (creatures the writer doesn't describe or define) are pushed to the edges of the current system because we've scrapped PCTs and SHAs thereby removing all the equalities and diversity monitoring that's going on in the NHS at the moment.

And the new system won't be accountable "to local stakeholders" - as if the current NHS organisation is remotely accountable to anyone locally! Or rather it is but in a different way from the way we - as ordinary folk - understand. The accountability - a cosy, all-mates-together kind of accountability - exists between those who the government fund to provide 'voice' and 'advocacy' and the agents of the NHS itself. What the writer is bemoaning isn't that the result will be a less "fair" NHS but that these mostly self-appointed representatives of "equalities groups" will be pushed to the margins.

I welcome this as a very positive step - hopefully to be replaced by the development of personalised service for individuals, as individuals. The present 'equalities' arrangement single out specific groups as worthy of 'representation' and fail to see real people with real concerns about the health support they receive. Although we seem lumbered with the Equalities Act - with all its basis in groupthink and special pleading - making sure that our care systems respond to individual need rather that meaningless group needs moderated by professional advocates must be a positive step.

Patients are now put at the centre of the NHS by employing professional "equalities stakeholders" to moderate the interface between the individual and health providers - that's what we have now. We get to the heart of the NHS by being given power - and power over suppliers comes from choice not the bureaucracy of equalities and diversity.

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Black, white, black white, black white...er red?

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The endless Cardhousian adjusting of position by the agents of diversity always took us in the direction of chaos. For all the good intentions (and we know where they lead) the diversity-mongers create a rod for their own back. Such as:

A mother has pulled her mixed-race children from a Mississippi school over a policy that dictates blacks and whites alternate years holding class officer positions but makes no provision for students of mixed parentage.

And the children concerned weren’t a simple ‘mixed race’ but half native american. A cocktail of confusion brought about by the pointless and lunatic search for “fairness”. In this case we’re told that the schools zebra crossing approach to the election of class officers is “under review”.

It’s all mad and just entrenches the race card into society.



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More on the triumph of groupthink: diversity

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Anyone involved in Government, public administration or the “third sector” (a term I loathe and hate – but that’s for another day) will have gotten pretty used to the concept of “diversity”. Or at least to the practical manifestations of that concept. Now, as those who know me are aware, I have a little bit of a problem with this concept and with the manner in which it is both exploited and also distorts decisions, policy and activity.

Sadly, the most common response of advocates for the idea of “diversity” is accusation – “that’s just racist”; “you’re a homophobe”; “don’t you care about the disabled”. So most of us simply accept the inevitable, bow our heads and carry on. This – another triumph of the bully – merely gives free rein to those who either make their careers in the identification of prejudice and discrimination or else seek advantage from exploitation of such allegations.

However, there is a fundamental objection to the idea of “diversity” as practiced and promoted – it depends on us being defined solely by the groups of which we are (by choice, by birth or by accident) a member – or worse still to which we are allocated by the merchants of diversity. Someone isn’t an individual – they are Afro-Caribbean, LGBT, over-50, working-class, disabled, Jewish – only given identity through the mediation of a group.

So “diversity” as we see it in practice is focused on there being diverse groups rather than diverse individuals. The reality of our thoughts, ideas, loves, prejudices, opinions and attitudes – real diversity – are as nothing beside the squeezing of everyone into a pre-determined set of boxes. As a general rule I don’t fill in ethnic monitoring forms – or, if forced, write “Other – human” – and I do not complete forms asking about my sexuality since that is absolutely none of their business.

As a liberal-minded sort, I find group diversity merely hides a deeper variety – the joy and pleasure of finding real human beings to engage with, enjoy the company of and have blazing rows with. Diversity groupthink blanks all this out by placing an artificial mediation of language, a marshalling of people into discrete blocs and the placing of barriers that would not otherwise have been there between different people.

For all the good intentions of some involved in “diversity” the reality is that it represents just another aspect of our corporate, controlling state. Another stick with which to beat – should the Government need to – the ordinary man or woman going about an ordinary life. Another way to slice and parse the people of our land – another “progressive” failure.

I am Simon Cooke. You may ask my age, my gender, my “ethnic group” (as if there were any such thing), my sexuality, my health status, my class, whether I’m employed, how much money I’ve got, my marital status, how many pets I have, whether I like cheese. And if you’re a mate, you’ll get an answer. If you’re the Government you won’t because it’s none of your bloody business.

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