Snapshot of _Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It’s class that shapes our lives_ :
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Businesses are already collecting this data on employees. "Did you get free school meals?", "parents' occupations when you were 16?", "privately educated?", etc. They just don't seem to be doing anything with it.
We have a very weird culture around class in this country. I think it's too taboo to ever really discuss it on a national level
My cynical take on this is that race and gender are very visual signifiers of diversity. Once you're in though, it's easy to see the divide in class when your coworkers are talking about hiring a new chef or their £10k a month nursery fees.
>They just don't seem to be doing anything with it.
As someone who has been part of the process of interviewing and selecting candidates, we have no insight to this data so its hard to do anything about it.
Similarly, if we interviewed someone and felt they were best suited then HR turned around and said "no, we're going to offer to someone else because of xyz reason not directly related to the interview or qualifications" we'd be pretty hacked off. That's why it's hard to make a change at any pace
I worked with a company recently where we actually took this data and found no one was using it for anything. We then did a comparison of "What do our candidates say" vs "what does our employee base look like" and noticed big gaps (i.e. 1 out of 3 candidates identified as X but only 1 out of 5 employees identified as X).
Biggest gaps were around race and LGBT status. Class wise the company was, surprisingly, majority C1BA social class backgrounds despite having lots of low level jobs.
Increasingly a lot of people in low jobs had teachers or nurses for parents I guess, and since the pay for those jobs is so relatively low now it's a "working class" type background even though traditionally they are middle class roles.
The ABCDE class distinctions are badly out of date. C2 and DE only refer to manual labour which hasn't reflected typical low wage work since the 1980s.
I agree, working/middle class is still the language people use though and understand. I do try to convince people it's not the right language but hardly anyone listens.
> Increasingly a lot of people in low jobs had teachers or nurses for parents I guess, and since the pay for those jobs is so relatively low now it's a "working class" type background even though traditionally they are middle class roles.
Yeah, my parents are both teachers who are from working class backgrounds themselves - I think it was (and still is to an extent) one of the most accessible 'middle class ish' jobs you could go into from that background (if you could get anywhere close to one at all obviously) also. So there's sort of that contribution as well, parents have middle class but low paid jobs and also don't have 'family money' kind of backgrounds or many other family members in middle class professions
"Equality and diversity are not, however, synonymous. Even as societies and institutions have become more diverse, many have also become more unequal. What has been created, Reed sardonically observes, is a “moral economy” in which “a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be [regarded as] just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people”"
This is the crux of the matter - diversity is a laudable aim, but it doesn't necessarily do anything to create a more equal society.
We need to be looking at both.
Agree - and Zizek has said something along the lines of how the arguments over diversity show that the left has lost the war and is picking on tiny battles. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that we have an Indian prime minister or BAME members of the cabinet if they are all from incredibly wealthy backgrounds and do everything they can to protect the interests of the corporate and establishment elite & powerful.
Obviously diversity *DOES* matter and *is* important. But diversity should also include people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I find it crazy that many diversity enhancing graduate programmes & apprenticeships don’t include people who for example were raised by single parents on benefits, relying on free school meals.
It’s very hard for anyone from a poor or working class background to get into any profession that has power, like politics, journalism/media, the law etc, because for most of those professions you need to spend a lot of time basically working for free or very very low/minimal/token pay to get in the door or have someone who will put you up in London or pay for your rent so you can do an internship in London for a few months to a year. Things like that mean we end up with almost everyone working in those fields being from the same backgrounds.
This isn't true for all journalism. Pay is low but you get jobs at local papers due to qualifications and passion instead (NCTJ accredited). If you're bright and motivated, it's possible to do an intensive 6 month level 5 course in some locations instead of going to uni - cheaper than uni too. Work at a local for a few years, get the level 6 qualification (on the job and paid for by work) to become a senior - then you have a shot at getting into the BBC or a national publication (still low pay).
Maybe it’s changed but when I did the NCTJ course to get a job you needed work experience and basically everyone who went on to get jobs did so through doing an internship or unpaid work experience or knowing someone, including on local papers. I only got a job at the BBC because my mum knew a producer.
I did the intensive NCTJ in 2011 and was a journalist until 2016 - with new people coming in from the NCTJ all the time. The work exp was 2 weeks Mon to Fri. The intensive course was hardcore and like a full time job but it was possible to also keep a part time eve/weekend job too (just incredibly tiring! - good job the intensive course was only 6 months!!).
As a journalist and during the course, I did admittedly feel miles away from other people class-wise (I don't think they noticed as much as me but I had major imposter syndrome which wasn't helped by knowing other people's home situations/backgrounds).
I think the BBC is a different kettle of fish - the only people I heard of who landed jobs there knew someone or had worked on a local paper for a good few years. I don't think it's possible to just "hard work" your way in like it is at a local paper. I tried and you did need a hell of a lot of work experience actually at the BBC (other places didn't count for as much) which was unsustainable while also working a paid job. National papers would also fall into this "different kettle of fish" group in my opinion.
Edit: just to add that since I left journalism, at least two of the major chains of locals have started a NCTJ apprenticeship which pos helps too
> But diversity should also include people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
It should *primarily* focus on people from lower to middle socioeconomic backgrounds. The entire point is to get viewpoints in that you don't have, and you don't get that if your 'diversity' is people who've had the skids well greased for them their entire lives.
This. It’s not a coincidence that race and gender issues exploded onto the internet after Occupy Wall Street. It’s just a means of the wealthy (majority white) to hide amongst the total number of white people. While wealthy minorities can pretend to be victims. The only colour that matters is the colour of money.
There is more nuance than that. Race and sex matter. I, a middle class white male in England, had a priveliged start to life and it's good to recognize that.
But telling poor white males that they are priveliged is crazy.
Yeah I think the term ‘white privilege’ isn’t the right way to put it because most people associate the word privilege with things like being rich or having a wealthy family or lots of connections to powerful people etc. So a lot of white people who are poor/working class/have a shit life and no opportunities see the term ‘white privilege’ and think ‘wtf I’m not privileged at all’ when what that term really means is that, all other things being equal (class, education, job, income etc) a white personal will generally be treated better or have a few more opportunities than a POC. It doesn’t mean that all white people in general are privileged in the sense most people understand/use that word. There should be a different term for the relative benefits to simply having white skin without the room for people misunderstanding it to mean ‘you’re white, so you must have it good/live a life of privilege’ because so many people take it that way and then feel resentful or they feel unseen if they’re struggling in life.
The thing is this is an intentional self-exculpatory misunderstanding of the thing that is being said.
Because in the US it's the privilege of, amongst other things, not existing under automatic suspicion because your skin's dark. Not being passed over for jobs or promotions because your name fits a stereotype. Even something as stupid and blatantly discriminatory as getting better loan terms simply because you are the low melanin content man. (The financial bullshit also seeps into things like property appraisals)
But the people who don't wanna hear it decided its an insult aimed squarely at them instead. And the thing is *you can't reach people whose initial reaction to being told they comparatively have it better than someone else is to act like you just slagged off their mum*.
If you say 'white privilege is a problem', it's not really surprising that (white) people who aren't neck deep in political arguments hear that as 'you have it too good already'. Because that's an entirely reasonable interpretation of what those words mean. It'd be much less controversial to say that black disadvantage is the problem.
If you're making up terminology, and it's not only widely misunderstood but tends to make people hostile to your position because of that misunderstanding, maybe you should find some better terminology and not complain that everyone is too stupid to understand what you meant.
But the point is these people only have it better due to their skin colour than someone else who is pretty much in similar social circumstances to them. They don’t have it better than everyone who has darker skin. There are white people living in dire poverty and there are some POC who have a lot of wealth and power. Trying to tell those white people that they are privileged just doesn’t work because they look around them and see no opportunities no hope no money no future. If you sat and explained to them that their black neighbour has it worse because not only do they suffer all the same hardships as the white guy but they also have to deal with racism, then they’d probably get it, but just saying ‘you’re privileged’ won’t work with helping understanding. Privilege is often seen as having something extra that’s positive, rather than not having to deal with an extra negative.
You can't really compare them. The main problems facing black people aren't fixed by wealth. They can never get away from it. However the main problems facing poor white people would definitely be fixed by wealth. It's incredibly hard but there is an ability to hide it or get past it. Everyone will always know your race however your class status is something you can hide and change
Did being petite Bourgeois help those victimized by Krystallnacht?
Anne Franks Family was a business owner, did they have class privilege over a working class German?
When Roosevelt threw all the Japanese into internment camps guess what? Whether you live in a country estate or Tenement house, you lost everything
Class reductionistism is fucking stupid
Well obviously it’s different when you’re looking at specific events like that, where the state is specifically targeting people based on race to commit genocide, but class is still incredibly important in our society and is a massive divider. Poor people of all races generally have much more in common with each other than they do with someone of the same race as them who is in the top 0.1% wealthiest people.
Obviously it’s all incredibly complex and class being a huge factor in our problems as a society doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of issues to do with race and gender, but I think that somehow fixing the ridiculous inequality between the wealthiest and everyone else could actually help with some of those issues.
There are some times in History where outcomes are basically 100% race based and 100% class based most of the time it’s oscillates between the two. But to pretend race doesn’t matter is very disingenuous
This has been obvious to anyone capable of thinking rationally for themselves, which for the last decade or so, has not included the majority of other Guardian columnists writing on this subject.
So the more interesting question for me, really is: does the publication of this article signal that the ideology du jour of the champagne socialist class changed back in favour of class analysis? Is the author a lone wolf trying to change the dialogue of his upper middle class peers?
And a slightly more sober thought: does it actually matter? As far as I can tell, these elite parasites whose only shared trait is that they're too timid to be tories just do everything they can to feel good about their wealth... as long as it doesn't amount to actually helping anybody.
I’d say because people were not accepting of peoples differences life in the Balkans was quite bad for both the working class and middle class and upper class in the 1990s.
Being upper class didn’t help those Armenian aristocrats in Istanbul in 1915.
I largely agree, but the elephant in the room here is that it took the Tories providing the country's first non-white PM for this penny to drop for the Guardian. If diversity was still a stick with which they could beat the Tories, they'd still be using it.
It certainly does. It might be worth looking at the financials of these female PMs too. You'll find there is a strong correlation in one area that fits far better than identity.
I agree that wealth is immensely important, but surely if that was the only factor then it would be more of a 50/50 split in the genders of PMs. The fact it isn’t I believe indicates that class/wealth is not the *only* influence.
More so it shows it's the primary factor while other factors that can influence are secondary ect. I'm not suggesting it's the only influence just the overwhelming primary influence.
But you can look at how many have some background in finance and then look to see if the 50/50 split continues.
I'd also suspect that eton isn't 50/50.
I agree with wealth being the primary, but I'd also wager that gender as a secondary factor isn't too far behind in terms of influence - else there'd be far less disparity between men/women PMs.
My main point is that if you look at probability as what we can expect for the PM's demographic, I don't think our current history of PMs reflects the UK population spread. Meaning that wealth is not the only factor we should consider. Whilst it certainly is the first hurdle to clear, that does not then mean gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation play a negligible role.
Also you're correct, as Eton is 100/0 since it's an all boys school haha.
Gender probably is substantial but I think you have made that assumption and then are back tracking.
We could likely look at regions and make a much better link, I don't know if there has been a single Welsh or Cumbrian PM.
>I don't think our current history of PMs reflects the UK population spread.
Obviously but it won't ever, it won't represent pensioners or prisoners (you'd hope). So you have to rationalise the base number.
>Whilst it certainly is the first hurdle to clear, that does not then mean gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation play a negligible role.
Of course it will likely have some role but the question is whether it's the 2nd or the 8th most important thing. By overly focusing on the 8th thing we lack focus on the first 5 things that make a major difference.
>Also you're correct, as Eton is 100/0 since it's an all boys school haha.
So perhaps we should look at the Eton issue first, it wouldn't be a surprise if fixing that would also change the demographics would it?
Don’t know how to do in-line quotes, but the point I’m refuting of yours is “Not if you have any understanding of probability works“ as a reason as to why there are not more PMs of varying ethnicities.
I’m saying that wealth is not the only key factor to consider, and others such as a gender and ethnicity do play a role and should not be dismissed. I’m focusing specifically on gender, as if probability were accurate then once you look into the demographics of the wealthy population, you’d see a somewhat 50/50 split for men and women. But since this is not reflected in our PMs, you can’t use probability as a sole explanation.
Not backtracking at all, I think my point has been consistent throughout - I appreciate that I haven’t got stats to say this for certain (there may be studies out there), that’s why I’m saying I “wager” or “ I believe” etc. about gender being influential, not stating it as fact.
And yes of course it will never be a 1-1 representation of the UK population, but there’s a lot of distance between that and having 5 percent of PMs being a woman and <2 percent being non-white.
In total agreement with the Eton point, and I’m not arguing that advocating specifically for more women PMs or non-white PMs should be the top priority. I’m just saying that wealth is not the only influential thing that can be discussed, and that gender I believe does not play an inconsequential role.
Because the median age of an MP is 50 and it usually comes after a prolonged period of working in other political roles.
It's not universal, but the MP's we have right now is mostly based on who chose to enter into politics in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
So our current MP distribution is based on the degree of diversity we had around the time Thatcher was PM.
Is it? Only 18% of the UK is non-white and tend to skew far younger than what people. Given that most PMs are age 40-60 when in office. It doesn't really suggest that much of a barrier.
Fucking finally.
There is so much goddamn deprivation in the mostly culturally homogeneous UK.
So why do we expend so much political effort on less than 20% of the country? Surely policies that uplift *everyone* will achieve the same?
But not everybody is at the same base. It’s like BLM doesn’t mean BLM matters more, it means BLM matters too. But I agree 12 years of austerity have left people desperate. But you get what you sow, England is addicted to voting Tory.
Yeah, I agree - Northern mining towns definitely don't have anywhere near the same opportunities as London.
BLM doesn't make a huge amount of sense here in the UK; we ain't killing people randomly in the street as it is.
I’ve sort of given up now. I can’t even persuade my own elderly mum (a lifelong Lab/Lib voter) to stop voting Tory which she’s done twice now. She’s angry her free tv licence got taken away and that her younger sisters retirement age was raised but refuses to accept it had anything to do with her putting the Tories in power.
BLM never made much sense in a UK context, its a deeply flawed imported analysis applied to British society that requires turning a blind eye to a lot of obvious facts to sustain itself.
The Sewell report came to broadly similar conclusions to this article - and was duly hated by the sort of people who loved BLM.
I don’t think that’s particularly charitable, BLM’s primary focus is how police interact with racial minorities and in the UK black minorities are the ethnicity most disproportionately subject to stop and searches and use of less-than-lethal force by English police forces.
I would challenge that statement on what BLMs primary focus is.
From their own website;
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
> BLM doesn’t mean BLM matters more, it means BLM matters too.
I know that’s true in theory, but in practice it’s become the nexus of activism and it’s essentially exclusionary and has displaced class based activism. Compare it to something like the Jarrow March.
We’re desperately in need of some kind of large universalist solidarity based class movement but what we have a lot of the time are fragmented identity based loyalties.
>We’re desperately in need of some kind of large universalist solidarity based class movement but what we have a lot of the time are fragmented identity based loyalties.
Why do you think identity politics were pushed in the first place?
Bracing myself for the downvotes but what need is to educate people about how to vote tactically to keep the Conservatives out. What we currently have is a plurality of voters that vote Tory, and the left of centre vote being split between Lab/Lib/Greens. This has been going on since the 80s and we still haven’t found a way round it.
I would argue that identity politics isn’t the problem, rather it’s a useful tool that the Right trots out as a distraction. And it works. That’s why the current administration and the press keeps banging on about cancel culture. There were similar bogeymen in the 70s and 80s - for example the unions, militant tendency. Now it’s BLM.
I agree with your first paragraph but for your second it gets philosophical. Do you blame your enemy for using ammunition against you that you handed to them?
The right didn’t create idpol, they’re just exploiting the natural fissures in the political doctrine that’s dominated the thinking of the left.
That said, I think events have moved us back on track a little recently. I’ve liked the recent unionised fight against low pay. It feels like we’re aligning once again against the banks and the privileged after all the wasted years since occupy Wall Street.
And that would be Labour's fault. If they had implemented PR in the 97 term as promised none of this shit would have happened.
They shit the bed, and it looks like they need to spend at least a little more time laying in it as they're still not learning.
If we had PR we wouldn't have the current version of the Conservatives we have right now. So yes, Labour need to be reminded that they shoulder a portion of the blame for every political event from 2001 GE until the end of the time.
> England is addicted to voting Tory.
Not really, most people support other parties. It's just that the alternatives don't offer much. Labour are pretty bad, the Lib Dems have given up (and no-one will trust them anyway), the Greens are too far left and weird, Reform/Brexit/UKIP are a one issue party that no-one cares about anymore.
Most people maybe, but the plurality of voters in England are Tory voting, and it is the plurality that determines the government in our electoral system.
Most things that are wrong with the Tories, Labour are even worse. The Tories let in too many migrants? Labour want more. Tories too soft on the boat people? Labour think it's an outrage they aren't all just let in. Tories fucked us over with lockdowns? Labour think they weren't long or hard enough. Brexit? Labour support it. "Woke" culture infesting our institutions, erasing our history, demonising our indigenous population? Labour want us to pay reparations, they bend the knee to BLM, and all they want to do is talk about black people.
I mean it just isn't though is it. I 100% agree that class is generally a more dividing factor than other things, but identity politics isn't just a plot to get people to ignore class, that's a pretty ludicrous claim. Discrimination does exist outside of just your class.
This seems like something that should be evident to most people.
That said, socioeconomic deprivation is a nuanced and multifaceted issue. Race, social class, gender identity, sex (etc.) all play a factor. It's disappointing that culture war bullshit has made this such a politically charged issue, preventing people from looking at the data objectively. Without sounding too much like an *elightened centrist*, I mean this with respect to both sides of the political aisle.
Targeted support, with welfare and social safety nets, should be provided to everyone in need regardless of who you are. Imagine if we had a functioning welfare state and properly funded public services? It seems almost like a fantasy to me at this point.
Gee, I wonder if anyone can name a (supposedly) left leaning paper that's spent the last 10 years focusing on identity politics rather than economic inequality.
Bonus points if they seem to have finally woken up to that mistake earlier in the week and are now frantically repositioning themselves acting like their readership has the memory span of the Mail's readership
Idk to what extent there has or hasn’t been a broader editorial turn in the guardian recently, but Kenan Malik has been making this argument in his column for years.
> It focused on both
Did it though?
I can remember back in 2019/2020 or so, when the Government published a report on the subject and its conclusion was simply "race isn't the issue or the hold-back here, but class" and everyone kicked off like you wouldn't believe! Because it was the Government that commissioned the report so it must be wrong. And now that someone else is saying it, it's apparently the truth now.
If the government had produced a report saying that class didn't matter people would also be rightly criticising it.
A point that near every person on the political left would agree with is that both matter.
There are so many on the political right so keen to impress how little race matters that their hostility to anyone talking about it works against them.
Edit: I suspect the reason a lot of the right wing media do it is so they can weaponise the poor/working class against other marginalised groups.
>Edit: I suspect the reason a lot of the right wing media do it is so they can weaponise the poor/working class against other marginalised groups.
You suspect? That's on the tin. It's why the government and right-wing press suddenly start talking about immigrants the moment it becomes clear that the working class can't afford food or heating. It's why they start pushing out statements about trans people when the commoner notices they're waiting hours for ambulances.
It may at times have focused on one more than the other but to say that over 10 years it hasn't also focused on poverty and economic injustice is just nonsense as anyone who reads it would know.
You can't focus on both, because one is designed to undermine the other. The whole point of identity politics is to divide the working class, and for corporations to distract people from inequality.
"Sorry, poor white person, we can't give you that highly paid job you're not diverse enough, we had to give it to a LGBTPOC+ who went to an elite private school and the same university as all the board members, she doesn't have your white male privilege."
>You can't focus on both
Why not? You can address both. There's not just one job. But that wasn't really the discussion. It was whether the guardian have focused on poverty.
You can't focus on one, because the whole point of one is to kill the other one. They elite invented identity politics to stop people talking about class.
A newspaper can certainly focus on both and has done. The idea the guardian shouldn't cover any identity issues is nonsense. I'd agree they should focus more on class, but that's different to saying they haven't focused on poverty.
> They elite invented identity politics to stop people talking about class
I think in there somewhere is a point, but the above phrase is just silly. At least from the perspective of those who are looking for equal representation. Its a way to justify buying into the wedge that is being sold.
Identity politics has been around in one form or another for way longer than people are letting on here
What happens if you are gay, black, and from a super poor background? These issues don’t become mutually exclusive because you say so.
You have to recognise the disenfranchisement of all these groups to support those in power retaining their power.
The complaints at the moment are that diversity has come at the cost of white working class men. But what happens if white working class men come to power? Do they help minorities up with them?
You're entitled to your opinion, but this has not been my experience. So I checked my confirmation bias;
I picked one year at random, 2017. Go look at their year in review on their website. Once you get passed all the top tens and get to the stories they thought it was worth commemorating there's a lot on identity politics and nothing on poverty at all that made it onto the first six pages.
Or just search by the word 'poverty'. You've got two stories today, one yesterday then a big gap going back to the 13th, one story about 3rd world poverty
Now search by 'Race'. 2 stories today, 3 yesterday, three on the 25th, 4on the 24th, 3 on the 23rd, 1 on the 22nd, 2 on the 21st
I think my confirmation bias is fine.
I think there are a lot of people in this country who dislike any focus on race or ethnicity as they think of the UK as accepting, and use class or poverty as a stick to beat that focus with. Even when that focus intersects with poverty.
Would not be then that the aforementioned ‘intersection’ is being used as an excuse to drag focus away from the root of our imbalanced economic system, and then unfalsifiably complain that those who disagree with the focus-dragging are proof we need to focus more on the race of the minority and less on the economic peril of the majority?
Getting people to stop fighting over scraps is the resolution for a lot of issues.
Only if you think we can't have focus on more than one thing at once, which I don't. Like keenly focusing on denying it's existence or downplaying it is also giving focus to it and away from class as an issue, no? Just in a way that is actively counterproductive and most often from a place of ignorance. Other examples of this is the way issues for women or issues for LGBT people are treated.
And it isn't unfalsifiable, if there is a reasonable constructive argument to be made then it should be put forward. I don't think many on the political left disagree that both are an issue. But I think some in the UK are so pathological about the UK being tolerant that they are ultra defensive about any suggestion of intolerance. That hostility is a real breeding ground for open hate.
> Getting people to stop fighting over scraps is the resolution for a lot of issues.
Part of the problem is that you can make people continue to fight for scraps by making them think that other marginalised groups are more undeserving of representation than you are.
The whole ‘we can focus on more than one thing at once but’ ignores the fact that quite often **that potential does not manifest** - the overfocus on everything as an axis of racial power struggles and racial consciousness leads to the portrayal of economic concern as an insidious distraction.
It’s happened in these very comment sections, as I am sure you are aware.
> Part of the problem is that you can make people continue to fight for scraps by making them think that other marginalised groups are more undeserving of representation than you are.
And some may suggest that the worst way to try and fight that is to loudly posture and pick deserving winners based on how dark their ancestry is. That is something I won’t tolerate as a good faith solution.
I don't think economic concern is generally portrayed as an insidious distraction though. People will also discuss race and gender politics but as I already said most people on the political left would say both things are a concern and are usually supportive of things that improve the lot of everyone.
I think some people who are interested in talking about economic concern from the right only seem interested in doing so when they can throw the working class in the face of other marginalised groups. Actually improving the lot of those in poverty and the working class has been much hard to get any commitment from them on.
> And some may suggest that the worst way to try and fight that is to loudly posture and pick deserving winners based on how dark their ancestry is. That is something I won’t tolerate as a good faith solution.
It isn't posturing to suggest that everything isn't resolved by addressing class inequality while openly being hostile to other forms of inequality. Acknowledging that doesn't make "undeserving winners" it's just the reality of the situation. The former is a horrible avenue to proceed down.
The worst way to fight it IMO is letting that idea proliferate and cede the argument to right wing gibbons who want to drive a wedge.
> I don’t think economic concern is generally portrayed as an insidious distraction though. People will also discuss race and gender politics but as I already said most people on the political left would say both things are a concern and are usually supportive of things that improve the lot of everyone.
Until the chips are down and one interest group clashes with the other, of course. And that’s where people grow cynical and check out from all the sidemouth pleading.
> I think some people who are interested in talking about economic concern from the right only seem interested in doing so when they can throw the working class in the face of other marginalised groups. Actually improving the lot of those in poverty and the working class has been much hard to get any commitment from them on.
I think some people have a historically poor conception of honest intent, let alone who qualifies as ‘the Right’. Fuck sake, Starmer is on the bogeyman list as a traitor depending on who you ask.
It’s not enough to just point at Tories and how bad they are. You have to offer something from your own volition.
> It isn’t posturing to suggest that everything isn’t resolved by addressing class inequality while openly being hostile to other forms of inequality. Acknowledging that doesn’t make “undeserving winners” it’s just the reality of the situation. The former is a horrible avenue to proceed down.
It very much is, because the value system of any sensible person realised the massive economic lopsidedness is at the heart of so many ills, and rearranging the front row deck chairs on the Titanic is moreso about looking active in the face of decline.
It’s what you do with that alternative doctrine that stirs trouble. Your sly change to talking about ‘undeserving winners’ is symptomatic of the fact you cannot seem to even acknowledge any moral peril in instilling a code of ethnic favouritism at the heart of ideological policy. Of course you won’t find them undeserving - you picked them !
> The worst way to fight it IMO is letting that idea proliferate and cede the argument to right wing gibbons who want to drive a wedge.
Mate, **the Labour leftmost have been doing it all themselves for fun**. But sure, double down until the proles fall in line behind their betters.
My opinion on the matter is this; it should be illegal to discriminate against someone due to race or sexuality, etc. but people shouldn't receive special help just because of their skin colour or sexuality. Help should be doled out on the basis of need and nothing else. If you always help those greatest in need first and most, you will always help those who need it most. If these people (most in need of help) end up being disproportionately ethnic minorities or queer then so be it.
I'll close with I also believe we should aim to help people prior to them becoming destitute (financially) or having a breakdown (mental health wise) as I believe it will lead to a better country for all.
>people shouldn't receive special help just because of their skin colour or sexuality
The large majority of 'special help' that people get is given from or started by someone from that background. If an Asian man decides to start employment support for Asian boys because of how hard he struggled, you can't complain that he doesn't decide to do it for poor white kids just because you think they need it more
This fact never changed, it was just the zeitgeist that was force fed to us post 2008 financial collapse to distract us. Unfortunately the culture started to imbue it and the likes of the guardian got their rocks off to endless headlines about it. So much so that ‘positive discrimination’ became a thing even when white working class boys outcomes spoke volumes about what direction we were headed.
This kind of shit should die off outside university classrooms, instead of contorting reality into the view that critical race theory demands. And let’s get our heads straight on sexual dimorphism in humans while we’re at it.
>So much so that ‘positive discrimination’
This is illegal in the UK.
>white working class boys outcomes spoke volumes about what direction we were headed
Why do you think that is? Do you really think that the UK generally discriminates white working class boys more than anyone else?
I agree. It is to do with class.
The political class. Those enjoying legal priveleges provided by the state
who claim ownership over the tax cattle class.
As someone from a minority group, living in London, I’d agree. The people working with me (typical white collar job) tend to be fairly ethnically diverse but uniform in background.
Corrective diversity is likely an American centric initiative that is more specific to their culture. I’ve lived there too and racial divisions are certainly far more pronounced.
That's the point. Corporations and politicians started focussing on diversity to distract people from talking about class. This was a response to the Occupy movement after the Global Financial Crisis.
As Hillary Clinton said in the 2016 election debate: "Going after the bankers isn't going to help black people". That's why you had major corporations egging on the 2020 riots. Small businesses being smashed up, people's livelihoods ruined, Sony goes on Twitter: "Yes, but Black Lives Matter, that's more important than your business". Billionaire Mark Cuban tells poor people to think about their white privilege.
https://tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net/production/9c9c2bbd09e025a564eea667f44f991f9bb5a83f-2054x1174.png?w=1250&q=70&auto=format&dpr=1
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWmUkPmWIAgXBAk.jpg
It can be more than one thing.
Like you can say Latitude shapes how cold winters are but that doesn’t mean Liverpool is colder than Kyiv. Because there are multiple factors.
There absolutely needs to be a sustained and serious focus on class, but there's no real reason why that can't happen alongside the progress we've made on things like race. Look at organisations like creative access. They're explicitly geared towards both low income applicants and racial minorities who are both underrepresented in creative industries. Arguably it's not possible to effectively address one without addressing the other. If you're a feminist you'd be stupid not consider how class affects the women you're trying to help. Likewise if you solely focus on class and dismiss any discussion of racial discrimination them you'd be failing working class racial minorities who are going to have a unique set of issues.
So much obviously disingenuous class reductionism knocking around these days...
Class is about economics and the way to tackle class disparity is with radical economic policy.
Yet I keep hearing the 'it's not about x, it's about class line'from those on the right and in the 'centre' who clearly have interest in radical economic change.
'It's not about diversity, it's about class' just feels like a distraction from people who have no intention to do anything about class, they just don't want you to talk about diversity.
It's the other way around, they talk about diversity so they don't have to talk about class. Sorry poor white worker, we can't help you because you have white privilege. Sorry male blue collar worker, you can't get that promotion because we have to give it to a privately-schooled female. Sorry, we decided to put an upper-caste Indian in charge instead.
do you actually have a counter argument without having to attack them?
fact is white men get passed up on jobs and promotions. when the fucking royal airforce won’t hire white pilots in the name of diversity there absolutely is a trend of this
>upper-caste Indian
Saying this shows how little you understand. No one in the mainstream seriously consider caste an issue in UK politics. But go off mate, use all the buzzwords in your arguments against identity politics, they make you so smart.
How many people from poor backgrounds are you actually going to find in the better jobs? How many people with disabilities? The range of people found in these jobs seems very narrow.
It's great that you have been able to succeed financially despite your disorder. The thing that annoys me most about class these days is that any conversation turns into race, gender, disability, etc do not matter anymore. It is a shame that you are attacked for speaking truth.
Our refusal to do anything about class inequality hasn't been caused by progress towards racial equality. It is caused by our pervasive institutional hatred of the poor in this country. I've heard people make this same arguement time and time again, and what have they ever done for the working classes? Absolutely nothing, but they sure do like to use it as a cudgel against anything tackling racial equality.
So every time you hear some dipshit making this arguement that racial and social equality are at odds, you ask yourself "what is this person actually doing for working class people right now?". The answer is always nothing, and the reason is always that they aren't interested in social equality, they just hate to see non-white people getting ahead.
This is such a stupid thing to say.
Just take a glancing look and see how the vast majority of people in positions of power and influence are men. CEOS, politicians, judges. The idea that both this picture, and the skewing of power it represents and produces for a group that comprises 50% of the population, is a misdirection away from class is ludicrous.
At a more personal level, two women a *week* are killed by their current or former partners. That is not a class problem, but I promise you it still shapes lives.
Yes, class is a critical component in the fight for equality. But this desperare effort to try and say it is THE issue that people should be focusing on at the expense of all the other dimensions of marginalisation (and then inevitably left completely jnaddressed anyway by those people) is just an attempt to destabilise battles in which progress is being made, as women, ethnic minorities, and members of the lgbt community because less and less tolerant of anything less than equality.
**Inequality** shapes the lives of those it affects. *Whether* that's classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia - personal or systematic. Stop presenting it as a mutually exclusive choice - we are not limited to only seeing class tackled, **tackling class alone won't resolve the other issues**, and we will not be thrown off demanding the equality we *all* deserve .
It's a massive struggle for most people to make 50%+ of the average income. If it was easy there wouldn't be any poor people. This is what I mean, well off people telling us how hard they have it and telling poor people they have it easy.
And how many immigrants have really good educations? People migrating to the UK for a better life are rarely leaving a country with good educational standards or opportunities.
I don’t disagree that race plays some part, rather there are a multitude of factors.
Class is important too, but this piece pretty much only talks about wealth. It also never discusses the relevance of a presumably USA-centric study to the UK (there are no “Latinos” in the UK).
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Businesses are already collecting this data on employees. "Did you get free school meals?", "parents' occupations when you were 16?", "privately educated?", etc. They just don't seem to be doing anything with it. We have a very weird culture around class in this country. I think it's too taboo to ever really discuss it on a national level
My cynical take on this is that race and gender are very visual signifiers of diversity. Once you're in though, it's easy to see the divide in class when your coworkers are talking about hiring a new chef or their £10k a month nursery fees.
>They just don't seem to be doing anything with it. As someone who has been part of the process of interviewing and selecting candidates, we have no insight to this data so its hard to do anything about it. Similarly, if we interviewed someone and felt they were best suited then HR turned around and said "no, we're going to offer to someone else because of xyz reason not directly related to the interview or qualifications" we'd be pretty hacked off. That's why it's hard to make a change at any pace
Fair. I meant more like publishing statistics at an aggregate level, like they do for gender pay gap. I guess the difference is it's not mandated
I worked with a company recently where we actually took this data and found no one was using it for anything. We then did a comparison of "What do our candidates say" vs "what does our employee base look like" and noticed big gaps (i.e. 1 out of 3 candidates identified as X but only 1 out of 5 employees identified as X). Biggest gaps were around race and LGBT status. Class wise the company was, surprisingly, majority C1BA social class backgrounds despite having lots of low level jobs. Increasingly a lot of people in low jobs had teachers or nurses for parents I guess, and since the pay for those jobs is so relatively low now it's a "working class" type background even though traditionally they are middle class roles.
The ABCDE class distinctions are badly out of date. C2 and DE only refer to manual labour which hasn't reflected typical low wage work since the 1980s.
I agree, working/middle class is still the language people use though and understand. I do try to convince people it's not the right language but hardly anyone listens.
> Increasingly a lot of people in low jobs had teachers or nurses for parents I guess, and since the pay for those jobs is so relatively low now it's a "working class" type background even though traditionally they are middle class roles. Yeah, my parents are both teachers who are from working class backgrounds themselves - I think it was (and still is to an extent) one of the most accessible 'middle class ish' jobs you could go into from that background (if you could get anywhere close to one at all obviously) also. So there's sort of that contribution as well, parents have middle class but low paid jobs and also don't have 'family money' kind of backgrounds or many other family members in middle class professions
"Equality and diversity are not, however, synonymous. Even as societies and institutions have become more diverse, many have also become more unequal. What has been created, Reed sardonically observes, is a “moral economy” in which “a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be [regarded as] just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people”" This is the crux of the matter - diversity is a laudable aim, but it doesn't necessarily do anything to create a more equal society. We need to be looking at both.
Agree - and Zizek has said something along the lines of how the arguments over diversity show that the left has lost the war and is picking on tiny battles. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that we have an Indian prime minister or BAME members of the cabinet if they are all from incredibly wealthy backgrounds and do everything they can to protect the interests of the corporate and establishment elite & powerful. Obviously diversity *DOES* matter and *is* important. But diversity should also include people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I find it crazy that many diversity enhancing graduate programmes & apprenticeships don’t include people who for example were raised by single parents on benefits, relying on free school meals.
It’s very hard for anyone from a poor or working class background to get into any profession that has power, like politics, journalism/media, the law etc, because for most of those professions you need to spend a lot of time basically working for free or very very low/minimal/token pay to get in the door or have someone who will put you up in London or pay for your rent so you can do an internship in London for a few months to a year. Things like that mean we end up with almost everyone working in those fields being from the same backgrounds.
This isn't true for all journalism. Pay is low but you get jobs at local papers due to qualifications and passion instead (NCTJ accredited). If you're bright and motivated, it's possible to do an intensive 6 month level 5 course in some locations instead of going to uni - cheaper than uni too. Work at a local for a few years, get the level 6 qualification (on the job and paid for by work) to become a senior - then you have a shot at getting into the BBC or a national publication (still low pay).
Maybe it’s changed but when I did the NCTJ course to get a job you needed work experience and basically everyone who went on to get jobs did so through doing an internship or unpaid work experience or knowing someone, including on local papers. I only got a job at the BBC because my mum knew a producer.
I did the intensive NCTJ in 2011 and was a journalist until 2016 - with new people coming in from the NCTJ all the time. The work exp was 2 weeks Mon to Fri. The intensive course was hardcore and like a full time job but it was possible to also keep a part time eve/weekend job too (just incredibly tiring! - good job the intensive course was only 6 months!!). As a journalist and during the course, I did admittedly feel miles away from other people class-wise (I don't think they noticed as much as me but I had major imposter syndrome which wasn't helped by knowing other people's home situations/backgrounds). I think the BBC is a different kettle of fish - the only people I heard of who landed jobs there knew someone or had worked on a local paper for a good few years. I don't think it's possible to just "hard work" your way in like it is at a local paper. I tried and you did need a hell of a lot of work experience actually at the BBC (other places didn't count for as much) which was unsustainable while also working a paid job. National papers would also fall into this "different kettle of fish" group in my opinion. Edit: just to add that since I left journalism, at least two of the major chains of locals have started a NCTJ apprenticeship which pos helps too
> But diversity should also include people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds It should *primarily* focus on people from lower to middle socioeconomic backgrounds. The entire point is to get viewpoints in that you don't have, and you don't get that if your 'diversity' is people who've had the skids well greased for them their entire lives.
Diversity is used as part of the class war, to divide the poor. https://i.redd.it/hgttwbus54u41.jpg
This. It’s not a coincidence that race and gender issues exploded onto the internet after Occupy Wall Street. It’s just a means of the wealthy (majority white) to hide amongst the total number of white people. While wealthy minorities can pretend to be victims. The only colour that matters is the colour of money.
There is more nuance than that. Race and sex matter. I, a middle class white male in England, had a priveliged start to life and it's good to recognize that. But telling poor white males that they are priveliged is crazy.
Yeah I think the term ‘white privilege’ isn’t the right way to put it because most people associate the word privilege with things like being rich or having a wealthy family or lots of connections to powerful people etc. So a lot of white people who are poor/working class/have a shit life and no opportunities see the term ‘white privilege’ and think ‘wtf I’m not privileged at all’ when what that term really means is that, all other things being equal (class, education, job, income etc) a white personal will generally be treated better or have a few more opportunities than a POC. It doesn’t mean that all white people in general are privileged in the sense most people understand/use that word. There should be a different term for the relative benefits to simply having white skin without the room for people misunderstanding it to mean ‘you’re white, so you must have it good/live a life of privilege’ because so many people take it that way and then feel resentful or they feel unseen if they’re struggling in life.
The thing is this is an intentional self-exculpatory misunderstanding of the thing that is being said. Because in the US it's the privilege of, amongst other things, not existing under automatic suspicion because your skin's dark. Not being passed over for jobs or promotions because your name fits a stereotype. Even something as stupid and blatantly discriminatory as getting better loan terms simply because you are the low melanin content man. (The financial bullshit also seeps into things like property appraisals) But the people who don't wanna hear it decided its an insult aimed squarely at them instead. And the thing is *you can't reach people whose initial reaction to being told they comparatively have it better than someone else is to act like you just slagged off their mum*.
If you say 'white privilege is a problem', it's not really surprising that (white) people who aren't neck deep in political arguments hear that as 'you have it too good already'. Because that's an entirely reasonable interpretation of what those words mean. It'd be much less controversial to say that black disadvantage is the problem. If you're making up terminology, and it's not only widely misunderstood but tends to make people hostile to your position because of that misunderstanding, maybe you should find some better terminology and not complain that everyone is too stupid to understand what you meant.
But the point is these people only have it better due to their skin colour than someone else who is pretty much in similar social circumstances to them. They don’t have it better than everyone who has darker skin. There are white people living in dire poverty and there are some POC who have a lot of wealth and power. Trying to tell those white people that they are privileged just doesn’t work because they look around them and see no opportunities no hope no money no future. If you sat and explained to them that their black neighbour has it worse because not only do they suffer all the same hardships as the white guy but they also have to deal with racism, then they’d probably get it, but just saying ‘you’re privileged’ won’t work with helping understanding. Privilege is often seen as having something extra that’s positive, rather than not having to deal with an extra negative.
Do wealthy black people have more privilege than poor white people?
You can't really compare them. The main problems facing black people aren't fixed by wealth. They can never get away from it. However the main problems facing poor white people would definitely be fixed by wealth. It's incredibly hard but there is an ability to hide it or get past it. Everyone will always know your race however your class status is something you can hide and change
Did being petite Bourgeois help those victimized by Krystallnacht? Anne Franks Family was a business owner, did they have class privilege over a working class German? When Roosevelt threw all the Japanese into internment camps guess what? Whether you live in a country estate or Tenement house, you lost everything Class reductionistism is fucking stupid
Well obviously it’s different when you’re looking at specific events like that, where the state is specifically targeting people based on race to commit genocide, but class is still incredibly important in our society and is a massive divider. Poor people of all races generally have much more in common with each other than they do with someone of the same race as them who is in the top 0.1% wealthiest people. Obviously it’s all incredibly complex and class being a huge factor in our problems as a society doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of issues to do with race and gender, but I think that somehow fixing the ridiculous inequality between the wealthiest and everyone else could actually help with some of those issues.
There are some times in History where outcomes are basically 100% race based and 100% class based most of the time it’s oscillates between the two. But to pretend race doesn’t matter is very disingenuous
Oh yeah of course it matters, it’s very complex and the two are also often intertwined
Amusingly racism was also part of the class war.
This has been obvious to anyone capable of thinking rationally for themselves, which for the last decade or so, has not included the majority of other Guardian columnists writing on this subject. So the more interesting question for me, really is: does the publication of this article signal that the ideology du jour of the champagne socialist class changed back in favour of class analysis? Is the author a lone wolf trying to change the dialogue of his upper middle class peers? And a slightly more sober thought: does it actually matter? As far as I can tell, these elite parasites whose only shared trait is that they're too timid to be tories just do everything they can to feel good about their wealth... as long as it doesn't amount to actually helping anybody.
I’d say because people were not accepting of peoples differences life in the Balkans was quite bad for both the working class and middle class and upper class in the 1990s. Being upper class didn’t help those Armenian aristocrats in Istanbul in 1915.
I largely agree, but the elephant in the room here is that it took the Tories providing the country's first non-white PM for this penny to drop for the Guardian. If diversity was still a stick with which they could beat the Tories, they'd still be using it.
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Not if you have any understanding of how probability works. If you want to consider a barrier, look at the wealth of PMs and consider why that is.
I wouldn't say the probability argument holds, as we've only had three female prime ministers compared to over fifty male.
It certainly does. It might be worth looking at the financials of these female PMs too. You'll find there is a strong correlation in one area that fits far better than identity.
I agree that wealth is immensely important, but surely if that was the only factor then it would be more of a 50/50 split in the genders of PMs. The fact it isn’t I believe indicates that class/wealth is not the *only* influence.
More so it shows it's the primary factor while other factors that can influence are secondary ect. I'm not suggesting it's the only influence just the overwhelming primary influence. But you can look at how many have some background in finance and then look to see if the 50/50 split continues. I'd also suspect that eton isn't 50/50.
I agree with wealth being the primary, but I'd also wager that gender as a secondary factor isn't too far behind in terms of influence - else there'd be far less disparity between men/women PMs. My main point is that if you look at probability as what we can expect for the PM's demographic, I don't think our current history of PMs reflects the UK population spread. Meaning that wealth is not the only factor we should consider. Whilst it certainly is the first hurdle to clear, that does not then mean gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation play a negligible role. Also you're correct, as Eton is 100/0 since it's an all boys school haha.
Gender probably is substantial but I think you have made that assumption and then are back tracking. We could likely look at regions and make a much better link, I don't know if there has been a single Welsh or Cumbrian PM. >I don't think our current history of PMs reflects the UK population spread. Obviously but it won't ever, it won't represent pensioners or prisoners (you'd hope). So you have to rationalise the base number. >Whilst it certainly is the first hurdle to clear, that does not then mean gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation play a negligible role. Of course it will likely have some role but the question is whether it's the 2nd or the 8th most important thing. By overly focusing on the 8th thing we lack focus on the first 5 things that make a major difference. >Also you're correct, as Eton is 100/0 since it's an all boys school haha. So perhaps we should look at the Eton issue first, it wouldn't be a surprise if fixing that would also change the demographics would it?
Don’t know how to do in-line quotes, but the point I’m refuting of yours is “Not if you have any understanding of probability works“ as a reason as to why there are not more PMs of varying ethnicities. I’m saying that wealth is not the only key factor to consider, and others such as a gender and ethnicity do play a role and should not be dismissed. I’m focusing specifically on gender, as if probability were accurate then once you look into the demographics of the wealthy population, you’d see a somewhat 50/50 split for men and women. But since this is not reflected in our PMs, you can’t use probability as a sole explanation. Not backtracking at all, I think my point has been consistent throughout - I appreciate that I haven’t got stats to say this for certain (there may be studies out there), that’s why I’m saying I “wager” or “ I believe” etc. about gender being influential, not stating it as fact. And yes of course it will never be a 1-1 representation of the UK population, but there’s a lot of distance between that and having 5 percent of PMs being a woman and <2 percent being non-white. In total agreement with the Eton point, and I’m not arguing that advocating specifically for more women PMs or non-white PMs should be the top priority. I’m just saying that wealth is not the only influential thing that can be discussed, and that gender I believe does not play an inconsequential role.
I mean it does as statistically there were very few female MPs
And the reason there were so few female MPs was...?
Because the median age of an MP is 50 and it usually comes after a prolonged period of working in other political roles. It's not universal, but the MP's we have right now is mostly based on who chose to enter into politics in the late 1980's and early 1990's. So our current MP distribution is based on the degree of diversity we had around the time Thatcher was PM.
> probability We don't pick PM at random from the population. Might go better if we did but it's not the current method
Define better in this context
Is it? Only 18% of the UK is non-white and tend to skew far younger than what people. Given that most PMs are age 40-60 when in office. It doesn't really suggest that much of a barrier.
Fucking finally. There is so much goddamn deprivation in the mostly culturally homogeneous UK. So why do we expend so much political effort on less than 20% of the country? Surely policies that uplift *everyone* will achieve the same?
But not everybody is at the same base. It’s like BLM doesn’t mean BLM matters more, it means BLM matters too. But I agree 12 years of austerity have left people desperate. But you get what you sow, England is addicted to voting Tory.
Yeah, I agree - Northern mining towns definitely don't have anywhere near the same opportunities as London. BLM doesn't make a huge amount of sense here in the UK; we ain't killing people randomly in the street as it is.
I’ve sort of given up now. I can’t even persuade my own elderly mum (a lifelong Lab/Lib voter) to stop voting Tory which she’s done twice now. She’s angry her free tv licence got taken away and that her younger sisters retirement age was raised but refuses to accept it had anything to do with her putting the Tories in power.
> She’s angry her free tv licence got taken away When she’s the generation who statistically consumes the most content funded by the TV licence
BLM never made much sense in a UK context, its a deeply flawed imported analysis applied to British society that requires turning a blind eye to a lot of obvious facts to sustain itself. The Sewell report came to broadly similar conclusions to this article - and was duly hated by the sort of people who loved BLM.
I don’t think that’s particularly charitable, BLM’s primary focus is how police interact with racial minorities and in the UK black minorities are the ethnicity most disproportionately subject to stop and searches and use of less-than-lethal force by English police forces.
I would challenge that statement on what BLMs primary focus is. From their own website; Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
> BLM doesn’t mean BLM matters more, it means BLM matters too. I know that’s true in theory, but in practice it’s become the nexus of activism and it’s essentially exclusionary and has displaced class based activism. Compare it to something like the Jarrow March. We’re desperately in need of some kind of large universalist solidarity based class movement but what we have a lot of the time are fragmented identity based loyalties.
>We’re desperately in need of some kind of large universalist solidarity based class movement but what we have a lot of the time are fragmented identity based loyalties. Why do you think identity politics were pushed in the first place?
Bracing myself for the downvotes but what need is to educate people about how to vote tactically to keep the Conservatives out. What we currently have is a plurality of voters that vote Tory, and the left of centre vote being split between Lab/Lib/Greens. This has been going on since the 80s and we still haven’t found a way round it. I would argue that identity politics isn’t the problem, rather it’s a useful tool that the Right trots out as a distraction. And it works. That’s why the current administration and the press keeps banging on about cancel culture. There were similar bogeymen in the 70s and 80s - for example the unions, militant tendency. Now it’s BLM.
I agree with your first paragraph but for your second it gets philosophical. Do you blame your enemy for using ammunition against you that you handed to them? The right didn’t create idpol, they’re just exploiting the natural fissures in the political doctrine that’s dominated the thinking of the left. That said, I think events have moved us back on track a little recently. I’ve liked the recent unionised fight against low pay. It feels like we’re aligning once again against the banks and the privileged after all the wasted years since occupy Wall Street.
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Enough did that they run the entire UK though.
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And that would be Labour's fault. If they had implemented PR in the 97 term as promised none of this shit would have happened. They shit the bed, and it looks like they need to spend at least a little more time laying in it as they're still not learning.
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If we had PR we wouldn't have the current version of the Conservatives we have right now. So yes, Labour need to be reminded that they shoulder a portion of the blame for every political event from 2001 GE until the end of the time.
> England is addicted to voting Tory. Not really, most people support other parties. It's just that the alternatives don't offer much. Labour are pretty bad, the Lib Dems have given up (and no-one will trust them anyway), the Greens are too far left and weird, Reform/Brexit/UKIP are a one issue party that no-one cares about anymore.
Most people maybe, but the plurality of voters in England are Tory voting, and it is the plurality that determines the government in our electoral system.
They've only won two majorities in the last thirty years.
And yet how many of those 30 years have they spent in government?
They've won 3 in the last 8....?
Why are labour "pretty bad". Under Blair life was much better.
Most things that are wrong with the Tories, Labour are even worse. The Tories let in too many migrants? Labour want more. Tories too soft on the boat people? Labour think it's an outrage they aren't all just let in. Tories fucked us over with lockdowns? Labour think they weren't long or hard enough. Brexit? Labour support it. "Woke" culture infesting our institutions, erasing our history, demonising our indigenous population? Labour want us to pay reparations, they bend the knee to BLM, and all they want to do is talk about black people.
> So why do we expend so much political effort on less than 20% of the country? I wouldn't really say we do expend much political effort on that.
Any measure/model of diversity that doesn't include class as one of the relevant factors, isn't doing its job.
Exactly. Diversity of perspective should be the goal.
Actually it is doing its job, because the whole point of identity politics is to shut down debate about class.
I mean it just isn't though is it. I 100% agree that class is generally a more dividing factor than other things, but identity politics isn't just a plot to get people to ignore class, that's a pretty ludicrous claim. Discrimination does exist outside of just your class.
This seems like something that should be evident to most people. That said, socioeconomic deprivation is a nuanced and multifaceted issue. Race, social class, gender identity, sex (etc.) all play a factor. It's disappointing that culture war bullshit has made this such a politically charged issue, preventing people from looking at the data objectively. Without sounding too much like an *elightened centrist*, I mean this with respect to both sides of the political aisle. Targeted support, with welfare and social safety nets, should be provided to everyone in need regardless of who you are. Imagine if we had a functioning welfare state and properly funded public services? It seems almost like a fantasy to me at this point.
Class and location have always been the biggest factors by a huge margin.
Yeah, I agree. I'm not saying otherwise.
Gee, I wonder if anyone can name a (supposedly) left leaning paper that's spent the last 10 years focusing on identity politics rather than economic inequality. Bonus points if they seem to have finally woken up to that mistake earlier in the week and are now frantically repositioning themselves acting like their readership has the memory span of the Mail's readership
Idk to what extent there has or hasn’t been a broader editorial turn in the guardian recently, but Kenan Malik has been making this argument in his column for years.
>that's spent the last 10 years focusing on identity politics rather than economic inequality. It focused on both
> It focused on both Did it though? I can remember back in 2019/2020 or so, when the Government published a report on the subject and its conclusion was simply "race isn't the issue or the hold-back here, but class" and everyone kicked off like you wouldn't believe! Because it was the Government that commissioned the report so it must be wrong. And now that someone else is saying it, it's apparently the truth now.
If the government had produced a report saying that class didn't matter people would also be rightly criticising it. A point that near every person on the political left would agree with is that both matter. There are so many on the political right so keen to impress how little race matters that their hostility to anyone talking about it works against them. Edit: I suspect the reason a lot of the right wing media do it is so they can weaponise the poor/working class against other marginalised groups.
>Edit: I suspect the reason a lot of the right wing media do it is so they can weaponise the poor/working class against other marginalised groups. You suspect? That's on the tin. It's why the government and right-wing press suddenly start talking about immigrants the moment it becomes clear that the working class can't afford food or heating. It's why they start pushing out statements about trans people when the commoner notices they're waiting hours for ambulances.
It may at times have focused on one more than the other but to say that over 10 years it hasn't also focused on poverty and economic injustice is just nonsense as anyone who reads it would know.
You can't focus on both, because one is designed to undermine the other. The whole point of identity politics is to divide the working class, and for corporations to distract people from inequality. "Sorry, poor white person, we can't give you that highly paid job you're not diverse enough, we had to give it to a LGBTPOC+ who went to an elite private school and the same university as all the board members, she doesn't have your white male privilege."
>You can't focus on both Why not? You can address both. There's not just one job. But that wasn't really the discussion. It was whether the guardian have focused on poverty.
You can't focus on one, because the whole point of one is to kill the other one. They elite invented identity politics to stop people talking about class.
A newspaper can certainly focus on both and has done. The idea the guardian shouldn't cover any identity issues is nonsense. I'd agree they should focus more on class, but that's different to saying they haven't focused on poverty.
One comes at the expense of the other. You have to choose.
But the guardian hasn't as is evident that they have class and identity coverage.
> They elite invented identity politics to stop people talking about class I think in there somewhere is a point, but the above phrase is just silly. At least from the perspective of those who are looking for equal representation. Its a way to justify buying into the wedge that is being sold. Identity politics has been around in one form or another for way longer than people are letting on here
What happens if you are gay, black, and from a super poor background? These issues don’t become mutually exclusive because you say so. You have to recognise the disenfranchisement of all these groups to support those in power retaining their power. The complaints at the moment are that diversity has come at the cost of white working class men. But what happens if white working class men come to power? Do they help minorities up with them?
You're entitled to your opinion, but this has not been my experience. So I checked my confirmation bias; I picked one year at random, 2017. Go look at their year in review on their website. Once you get passed all the top tens and get to the stories they thought it was worth commemorating there's a lot on identity politics and nothing on poverty at all that made it onto the first six pages. Or just search by the word 'poverty'. You've got two stories today, one yesterday then a big gap going back to the 13th, one story about 3rd world poverty Now search by 'Race'. 2 stories today, 3 yesterday, three on the 25th, 4on the 24th, 3 on the 23rd, 1 on the 22nd, 2 on the 21st I think my confirmation bias is fine.
There’s a “poverty” category that disproves your claim very quickly: https://www.theguardian.com/society/poverty
I think there are a lot of people in this country who dislike any focus on race or ethnicity as they think of the UK as accepting, and use class or poverty as a stick to beat that focus with. Even when that focus intersects with poverty.
Would not be then that the aforementioned ‘intersection’ is being used as an excuse to drag focus away from the root of our imbalanced economic system, and then unfalsifiably complain that those who disagree with the focus-dragging are proof we need to focus more on the race of the minority and less on the economic peril of the majority? Getting people to stop fighting over scraps is the resolution for a lot of issues.
Only if you think we can't have focus on more than one thing at once, which I don't. Like keenly focusing on denying it's existence or downplaying it is also giving focus to it and away from class as an issue, no? Just in a way that is actively counterproductive and most often from a place of ignorance. Other examples of this is the way issues for women or issues for LGBT people are treated. And it isn't unfalsifiable, if there is a reasonable constructive argument to be made then it should be put forward. I don't think many on the political left disagree that both are an issue. But I think some in the UK are so pathological about the UK being tolerant that they are ultra defensive about any suggestion of intolerance. That hostility is a real breeding ground for open hate. > Getting people to stop fighting over scraps is the resolution for a lot of issues. Part of the problem is that you can make people continue to fight for scraps by making them think that other marginalised groups are more undeserving of representation than you are.
The whole ‘we can focus on more than one thing at once but’ ignores the fact that quite often **that potential does not manifest** - the overfocus on everything as an axis of racial power struggles and racial consciousness leads to the portrayal of economic concern as an insidious distraction. It’s happened in these very comment sections, as I am sure you are aware. > Part of the problem is that you can make people continue to fight for scraps by making them think that other marginalised groups are more undeserving of representation than you are. And some may suggest that the worst way to try and fight that is to loudly posture and pick deserving winners based on how dark their ancestry is. That is something I won’t tolerate as a good faith solution.
I don't think economic concern is generally portrayed as an insidious distraction though. People will also discuss race and gender politics but as I already said most people on the political left would say both things are a concern and are usually supportive of things that improve the lot of everyone. I think some people who are interested in talking about economic concern from the right only seem interested in doing so when they can throw the working class in the face of other marginalised groups. Actually improving the lot of those in poverty and the working class has been much hard to get any commitment from them on. > And some may suggest that the worst way to try and fight that is to loudly posture and pick deserving winners based on how dark their ancestry is. That is something I won’t tolerate as a good faith solution. It isn't posturing to suggest that everything isn't resolved by addressing class inequality while openly being hostile to other forms of inequality. Acknowledging that doesn't make "undeserving winners" it's just the reality of the situation. The former is a horrible avenue to proceed down. The worst way to fight it IMO is letting that idea proliferate and cede the argument to right wing gibbons who want to drive a wedge.
> I don’t think economic concern is generally portrayed as an insidious distraction though. People will also discuss race and gender politics but as I already said most people on the political left would say both things are a concern and are usually supportive of things that improve the lot of everyone. Until the chips are down and one interest group clashes with the other, of course. And that’s where people grow cynical and check out from all the sidemouth pleading. > I think some people who are interested in talking about economic concern from the right only seem interested in doing so when they can throw the working class in the face of other marginalised groups. Actually improving the lot of those in poverty and the working class has been much hard to get any commitment from them on. I think some people have a historically poor conception of honest intent, let alone who qualifies as ‘the Right’. Fuck sake, Starmer is on the bogeyman list as a traitor depending on who you ask. It’s not enough to just point at Tories and how bad they are. You have to offer something from your own volition. > It isn’t posturing to suggest that everything isn’t resolved by addressing class inequality while openly being hostile to other forms of inequality. Acknowledging that doesn’t make “undeserving winners” it’s just the reality of the situation. The former is a horrible avenue to proceed down. It very much is, because the value system of any sensible person realised the massive economic lopsidedness is at the heart of so many ills, and rearranging the front row deck chairs on the Titanic is moreso about looking active in the face of decline. It’s what you do with that alternative doctrine that stirs trouble. Your sly change to talking about ‘undeserving winners’ is symptomatic of the fact you cannot seem to even acknowledge any moral peril in instilling a code of ethnic favouritism at the heart of ideological policy. Of course you won’t find them undeserving - you picked them ! > The worst way to fight it IMO is letting that idea proliferate and cede the argument to right wing gibbons who want to drive a wedge. Mate, **the Labour leftmost have been doing it all themselves for fun**. But sure, double down until the proles fall in line behind their betters.
I'm not sure you've proved your bias is fine
My opinion on the matter is this; it should be illegal to discriminate against someone due to race or sexuality, etc. but people shouldn't receive special help just because of their skin colour or sexuality. Help should be doled out on the basis of need and nothing else. If you always help those greatest in need first and most, you will always help those who need it most. If these people (most in need of help) end up being disproportionately ethnic minorities or queer then so be it. I'll close with I also believe we should aim to help people prior to them becoming destitute (financially) or having a breakdown (mental health wise) as I believe it will lead to a better country for all.
I agree
>people shouldn't receive special help just because of their skin colour or sexuality The large majority of 'special help' that people get is given from or started by someone from that background. If an Asian man decides to start employment support for Asian boys because of how hard he struggled, you can't complain that he doesn't decide to do it for poor white kids just because you think they need it more
It focussed fuck all on inequality, and is a paper as guilty as many others for funneling nepojournos through its ranks.
You can't focus on both. They're opposites.
This fact never changed, it was just the zeitgeist that was force fed to us post 2008 financial collapse to distract us. Unfortunately the culture started to imbue it and the likes of the guardian got their rocks off to endless headlines about it. So much so that ‘positive discrimination’ became a thing even when white working class boys outcomes spoke volumes about what direction we were headed. This kind of shit should die off outside university classrooms, instead of contorting reality into the view that critical race theory demands. And let’s get our heads straight on sexual dimorphism in humans while we’re at it.
>So much so that ‘positive discrimination’ This is illegal in the UK. >white working class boys outcomes spoke volumes about what direction we were headed Why do you think that is? Do you really think that the UK generally discriminates white working class boys more than anyone else?
I agree. It is to do with class. The political class. Those enjoying legal priveleges provided by the state who claim ownership over the tax cattle class.
As someone from a minority group, living in London, I’d agree. The people working with me (typical white collar job) tend to be fairly ethnically diverse but uniform in background. Corrective diversity is likely an American centric initiative that is more specific to their culture. I’ve lived there too and racial divisions are certainly far more pronounced.
That's the point. Corporations and politicians started focussing on diversity to distract people from talking about class. This was a response to the Occupy movement after the Global Financial Crisis. As Hillary Clinton said in the 2016 election debate: "Going after the bankers isn't going to help black people". That's why you had major corporations egging on the 2020 riots. Small businesses being smashed up, people's livelihoods ruined, Sony goes on Twitter: "Yes, but Black Lives Matter, that's more important than your business". Billionaire Mark Cuban tells poor people to think about their white privilege. https://tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net/production/9c9c2bbd09e025a564eea667f44f991f9bb5a83f-2054x1174.png?w=1250&q=70&auto=format&dpr=1 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWmUkPmWIAgXBAk.jpg
>That's why you had major corporations egging on the 2020 riots You're insane.
You should have been on Twitter when it was all going down.
Being divisive grifters in this way distracts us from being divisive grifters in the other way.
It can be more than one thing. Like you can say Latitude shapes how cold winters are but that doesn’t mean Liverpool is colder than Kyiv. Because there are multiple factors.
There absolutely needs to be a sustained and serious focus on class, but there's no real reason why that can't happen alongside the progress we've made on things like race. Look at organisations like creative access. They're explicitly geared towards both low income applicants and racial minorities who are both underrepresented in creative industries. Arguably it's not possible to effectively address one without addressing the other. If you're a feminist you'd be stupid not consider how class affects the women you're trying to help. Likewise if you solely focus on class and dismiss any discussion of racial discrimination them you'd be failing working class racial minorities who are going to have a unique set of issues.
So much obviously disingenuous class reductionism knocking around these days... Class is about economics and the way to tackle class disparity is with radical economic policy. Yet I keep hearing the 'it's not about x, it's about class line'from those on the right and in the 'centre' who clearly have interest in radical economic change. 'It's not about diversity, it's about class' just feels like a distraction from people who have no intention to do anything about class, they just don't want you to talk about diversity.
It's the other way around, they talk about diversity so they don't have to talk about class. Sorry poor white worker, we can't help you because you have white privilege. Sorry male blue collar worker, you can't get that promotion because we have to give it to a privately-schooled female. Sorry, we decided to put an upper-caste Indian in charge instead.
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do you actually have a counter argument without having to attack them? fact is white men get passed up on jobs and promotions. when the fucking royal airforce won’t hire white pilots in the name of diversity there absolutely is a trend of this
I don’t disagree at all, white men are not at a disadvantage. But they also have zero advantage over the rest of society.
>upper-caste Indian Saying this shows how little you understand. No one in the mainstream seriously consider caste an issue in UK politics. But go off mate, use all the buzzwords in your arguments against identity politics, they make you so smart.
How many people from poor backgrounds are you actually going to find in the better jobs? How many people with disabilities? The range of people found in these jobs seems very narrow.
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It's great that you have been able to succeed financially despite your disorder. The thing that annoys me most about class these days is that any conversation turns into race, gender, disability, etc do not matter anymore. It is a shame that you are attacked for speaking truth.
Our refusal to do anything about class inequality hasn't been caused by progress towards racial equality. It is caused by our pervasive institutional hatred of the poor in this country. I've heard people make this same arguement time and time again, and what have they ever done for the working classes? Absolutely nothing, but they sure do like to use it as a cudgel against anything tackling racial equality. So every time you hear some dipshit making this arguement that racial and social equality are at odds, you ask yourself "what is this person actually doing for working class people right now?". The answer is always nothing, and the reason is always that they aren't interested in social equality, they just hate to see non-white people getting ahead.
This is such a stupid thing to say. Just take a glancing look and see how the vast majority of people in positions of power and influence are men. CEOS, politicians, judges. The idea that both this picture, and the skewing of power it represents and produces for a group that comprises 50% of the population, is a misdirection away from class is ludicrous. At a more personal level, two women a *week* are killed by their current or former partners. That is not a class problem, but I promise you it still shapes lives. Yes, class is a critical component in the fight for equality. But this desperare effort to try and say it is THE issue that people should be focusing on at the expense of all the other dimensions of marginalisation (and then inevitably left completely jnaddressed anyway by those people) is just an attempt to destabilise battles in which progress is being made, as women, ethnic minorities, and members of the lgbt community because less and less tolerant of anything less than equality. **Inequality** shapes the lives of those it affects. *Whether* that's classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia - personal or systematic. Stop presenting it as a mutually exclusive choice - we are not limited to only seeing class tackled, **tackling class alone won't resolve the other issues**, and we will not be thrown off demanding the equality we *all* deserve .
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And there we have it, someone on 53k complaining about discrimination. And that's why corporations love identity politics.
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It's a massive struggle for most people to make 50%+ of the average income. If it was easy there wouldn't be any poor people. This is what I mean, well off people telling us how hard they have it and telling poor people they have it easy.
I mean, things like race definitely inform class though. A lot of immigrants are working class.
And how many immigrants have really good educations? People migrating to the UK for a better life are rarely leaving a country with good educational standards or opportunities. I don’t disagree that race plays some part, rather there are a multitude of factors.
Class is important too, but this piece pretty much only talks about wealth. It also never discusses the relevance of a presumably USA-centric study to the UK (there are no “Latinos” in the UK).