Are the BBC Racist

[Russian Troll Bot]

Countdown said:

Russian Troll Bot said:

I haven't, I've pointed out the flaws in positive discrimination and that you will not achieve a meritocracy by replacing one form of nepotism with another. Or to put it another way, if you were in charge of a company, would you employ the best people for the job, or those who represent the ethnic makeup of the UK?

You’re assuming the “default” is a genuine meritocracy when it has been proven not to be on numerous occasions.

Unless an employer is caught admitting they would not employ someone because of their skin colour it cannot be proven. It's supposition that could easily be twisted to fit a narrative, without proof you can claim any setback or disadvantage must be due to racism. And as I said earlier, if the employer really is racist then making them interview a minority they wouldn't take on anyway achieves nothing. The BBC states that 14% of its employees are from minority backgrounds, which broadly fits with the UK's makeup, so there doesn't seem to be a particular problem there. Still interested to know whether you would rather employ the most skilled or most diverse workers?

[Countdown]

Russian Troll Bot said:

Unless an employer is caught admitting they would not employ someone because of their skin colour it cannot be proven. It's supposition that could easily be twisted to fit a narrative, without proof you can claim any setback or disadvantage must be due to racism.

It happens, and there is a lot of evidence of it happening.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-ne...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-387513...

Russian Troll Bot said:

And as I said earlier, if the employer really is racist then making them interview a minority they wouldn't take on anyway achieves nothing.

I agree. If an employer is “really racist” they won’t go out of their way to attract employees from a minority background. Equally, if an employer isn’t racist they’ll look at their recruitment policies to make sure they aren’t discriminating, which is what the Beeb seem to be doing in this case.

Russian Troll Bot said:

The BBC states that 14% of its employees are from minority backgrounds, which broadly fits with the UK's makeup, so there doesn't seem to be a particular problem there.

On its own the %age is irrelevant. If 98% of the applicants were from a minority background then a reasonable employer might want to look at why only 14% were being successful with their application.

Russian Troll Bot said:

Still interested to know whether you would rather employ the most skilled or most diverse workers?

I would want the most skilled. As part of ensuring this I’d want to make sure my recruitment processes were designed to attract the most skilled, and that there weren’t any barriers, either overt or indirect, which prevented me employing the most skilled.

[IanH755]

Countdown said:

Equally, if an employer isn’t racist they’ll look at their recruitment policies to make sure they aren’t discriminating, which is what the Beeb seem to be doing in this case.

BBC Tweet said:

the traineeship is only open to candidates from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority background.

You just can't make up that level of hypocrisy

Edited by IanH755 on Sunday 21st January 15:37

[Countdown]

IanH755 said:

You just can't make up that level of hypocrisy

Edited by IanH755 on Sunday 21st January 15:37

Did you read the whole post?

[Russian Troll Bot]

Countdown said:

I would want the most skilled. As part of ensuring this I’d want to make sure my recruitment processes were designed to attract the most skilled, and that there weren’t any barriers, either overt or indirect, which prevented me employing the most skilled.

So we're in agreement that we shouldn't hire based on skin colour?

Edited by Russian Troll Bot on Sunday 21st January 21:39

[IanH755]

Countdown said:

IanH755 said:

You just can't make up that level of hypocrisy

Edited by IanH755 on Sunday 21st January 15:37

Did you read the whole post?

Yeap, discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination and no matter which side you are on you can't deny that basic fact, only you did, so I pointed that out to you.

[Moonhawk]

Russian Troll Bot said:

The BBC states that 14% of its employees are from minority backgrounds, which broadly fits with the UK's makeup, so there doesn't seem to be a particular problem there.

It’s 9% higher than the demographic makeup of the uk would suggest.

9% is about the same level required to have 3rd wave feminists frothing at the mouth when it involves median pay.

[ATG]

Russian Troll Bot said:

I haven't, I've pointed out the flaws in positive discrimination and that you will not achieve a meritocracy by replacing one form of nepotism with another. Or to put it another way, if you were in charge of a company, would you employ the best people for the job, or those who represent the ethnic makeup of the UK?


Another good example, the East Midlands Labour Conference is charging white attendees £10 more for a visitors pass. Again, I am all for equality but this means paying the same as everyone else

https://login.labevents.org/application/eventappli...

Other's have already addressed the weakness of just saying "companies should just hire the best, and isn't that what you'd do?".

But even if we chose to ignore the demand side of the labour market (i.e. companies who want to hire workers), as I said, we need to think about the supply side too. As an employer I can't hire people who don't apply. If a black person doesn't apply for the job I'm offering (even though they'd be a very strong candidate), because they think consciously or unconsciously that their ethnicity is a barrier to employment, then (a) that limits their opportunities, but (b) it's also bad for companies because they're never seeing the potential field of talented applicants in the first place.

It is worth trying to change this. One way to do so is to actively increase the number of black employees so that people can start to see black people doing these jobs. That helps make it start to feel normal that black people would be doing these jobs, creating a virtuous circle that encourages more black people to apply for jobs, widening the field of applicants for employers, making it seem less unusual to pick a black candidate, etc, etc.

I'd agree that using discrimination to try to reduce discrimination seems counterintuitive and it needs to be explained clearly to the public. It can easily backfire if enough people, through a failure of thinking, or paranoia, think that they're actively being harmed by it.

We do need to recognise the scale of the problem that people are trying to address. Switching from the hypothetical "black" example I've been using, here's my first hand experience working in IT in the City; women make up something like 51% of the population, yet they represent maybe 10% of my colleagues in London, and if I reduce that to British colleagues in London, the female representation drops to maybe 1%. I must have interviewed several hundred candidates for my current employer. I genuinely can't remember seeing the CV of a single British woman in all that time.

We have a big graduate recruitment programme. In recent years that programme has recruited far more Romanian women to the bits of the UK business I've been involved with than British. (And just to be clear, this isn't because we're paying buttons. We're a Tier 1 investment bank, offering excellent remuneration and opportunities for new recruits, and our vacancies are hugely over subscribed.)

Over the years I've heard a lot of blokes at best say "women don't like these sorts of jobs", "women aren't interested". So what do we think their reaction would be to a female candidate? At the very least, they're going to think she might be a bit of an odd-ball. I don't hear that crap around my current company, largely because it demonstratively isn't true. We've got enough bright, interested, successful female employees that everyone can literally SEE that it isn't true. That physical visibility of even a relatively small number of employees is important in changing perceptions. Our perception of our female recruitment is now squarely one of missed opportunity; we want access to the talent pool.

That change of perception needs to happen much more widely in the UK. We've got a huge structural shortage of IT employees in the UK; no bloody surprise given we collectively treat it as an almost entirely male preserve. The good news for me as an employee is that this distorts the pay scales hugely in our favour so that we're raking in salaries out of all proportion to the amount of responsibility that we carry. But from the perspective of the wider economy, it's a kick in the plums for growth and productivity.

[Countdown]

ATG said:

We do need to recognise the scale of the problem that people are trying to address. Switching from the hypothetical "black" example I've been using, here's my first hand experience working in IT in the City; women make up something like 51% of the population, yet they represent maybe 10% of my colleagues in London, and if I reduce that to British colleagues in London, the female representation drops to maybe 1%. I must have interviewed several hundred candidates for my current employer. I genuinely can't remember seeing the CV of a single British woman in all that time.

We have a big graduate recruitment programme. In recent years that programme has recruited far more Romanian women to the bits of the UK business I've been involved with than British. (And just to be clear, this isn't because we're paying buttons. We're a Tier 1 investment bank, offering excellent remuneration and opportunities for new recruits, and our vacancies are hugely over subscribed.)

Slightly O/T but I am having similar experiences - we have really well qualified applicants from mainly eastern European countries applying for entry level jobs. We have just appointed a Polish lady who CIMA passed finalist to a sales Ledger supervisor role, the UK based applicants just weren't as good.

As part of our recruitment process we don't get to see the name/address/age. (We do get to see the qualifications so sometimes you can guess somebody's age or nationality.) We also have an extremely diverse workforce - coincidence?

[Countdown]

IanH755 said:

Yeap, discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination and no matter which side you are on you can't deny that basic fact, only you did, so I pointed that out to you.

You are looking at one specific point in the recruitment process and saying "Ah!! There's "discrimination here!" without considering whether there is discrimination elsewhere in the process. For example

Is there anything which puts off certain section of the population from applying?
Does the selection process enable overt/covert discrimination?
Do the selection criteria create barriers to entry?

For example - if I advertise all my vacancies in either "Asian Image", "Readers Wives" or the Guardian I am targeting a specific section of the population. Now you may think "Duh! That's obvious!" it's surprising how some employers don't realise that not everybody uses the same media that they do.

[IanH755]

Countdown said:

IanH755 said:

Yeap, discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination and no matter which side you are on you can't deny that basic fact, only you did, so I pointed that out to you.

You are looking at one specific point in the recruitment process and saying "Ah!! There's "discrimination here!" without considering whether there is discrimination elsewhere in the process. For example

Is there anything which puts off certain section of the population from applying?
Does the selection process enable overt/covert discrimination?
Do the selection criteria create barriers to entry?

For example - if I advertise all my vacancies in either "Asian Image", "Readers Wives" or the Guardian I am targeting a specific section of the population. Now you may think "Duh! That's obvious!" it's surprising how some employers don't realise that not everybody uses the same media that they do.

Again, ANY discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination, no matter which side you are on and, as the BBC's own website says (not what I say) -

"If someone discriminates against you because of your race, the colour of your skin or where you're from, that's racism. And racism is a crime." taken from this page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/y5ZqxPcBt...



So the BBC themselves are in fact calling their own "no white people please" recruitment/training programs racist (again, not me saying this but the BBC themselves) and you can't get people to join together as one and banish racism if you are actively discriminating against a section of people based on their skin colour.

So like I said earlier, the hypocrisy is amazing!

[Countdown]

Countdown said:

IanH755 said:

Yeap, discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination and no matter which side you are on you can't deny that basic fact, only you did, so I pointed that out to you.

You are looking at one specific point in the recruitment process and saying "Ah!! There's "discrimination here!" without considering whether there is discrimination elsewhere in the process. For example

Is there anything which puts off certain section of the population from applying?
Does the selection process enable overt/covert discrimination?
Do the selection criteria create barriers to entry?

For example - if I advertise all my vacancies in either "Asian Image", "Readers Wives" or the Guardian I am targeting a specific section of the population. Now you may think "Duh! That's obvious!" it's surprising how some employers don't realise that not everybody uses the same media that they do.

[IanH755]

Countdown said:

Countdown said:

IanH755 said:

Yeap, discrimination, whether "positive" or "negative" is still discrimination and no matter which side you are on you can't deny that basic fact, only you did, so I pointed that out to you.

You are looking at one specific point in the recruitment process and saying "Ah!! There's "discrimination here!" without considering whether there is discrimination elsewhere in the process..

Any.............discrimination..................is....................Racist.......................said ....................the....................BBC...............who ...............then .................discriminated.

I realise it's not as witty or clever as a blank post but I've tried my best to make it easy for you. However I also realise that you seem to be happy justifying what the BBC themselves call racism (again, I'm not calling it racism, the BBC is) and I see that neither of us appear to be showing any flexibility in our opinions so I think it's best if we just agree to disagree on what is racism and metaphorically "go our separate ways" to avoid bogging the thread down but thanks for the discussion anyway, it's always interesting to hear various opinions.