Positive Racism

Ok, a personal axe to grind here.

Being in the job hunting market at the moment I have once again become accustomed to filling in countless application forms. This isn't a bad thing in itself, since one merely has to fill in the same basic facts, in addition to lying through one's teeth. Where my grudge lies is with that little section that is often attached, commonly bearing the name 'diversity monitoring'.

Now these always come with a little disclaimer, usually something along the lines of 'this information is not taken into account in our decision making process'. Bollocks it isn't. Why have it on the application form? To monitor diversity you say? Why? If 1 in 9 of the UK population is non-white, does this necessarily mean that 1 in 9 of any companies workforce should be non-white? Of course it doesn't. As I understand it, the thinking behind this 'diversity monitoring' is to make sure that companies and employers are employing people on their merits and not on their race, therefore ensuring that there is no racial bias within a workforce.

Of course, the break in logic here lies between bias and consequence. Sure, a biased employer would probably lead to an unrepresentative workforce; but does an unrepresentative workforce necessarily represent a biased employer - of course it doesn't. Let's suggest that in an interview situation, of four candidates, half were White British and half non-White. Now let us suppose that both White candidates were far better qualified for the only two jobs available - would it be racist of an employer to favour them? No.

And there lies the crux of the issue, for me at least. If we want a true meritocracy, we should accept that by the laws of natural probability, some workforces will be unrepresentative of the general population - is this an issue? It shouldn't be. Surely it is equality of opportunity we should stand for, not forced equality whereby a person can only get a job if they fit an exact specification for race, gender, sexuality, etc. and thereby fill the employers quota. It is on this principle that I oppose 'positive discrimination' - the concept on which blog's title mocks - in all forms. Take female MPs; naturally I have no opposition to having more female MPs, but at the same time I am not biased one way or the other. Quite frankly, I don't care one way or the other for the gender of my MP. To my mind, as long as both genders have an equal chance to get selected for seats, the outcome is irrelevant. The same applies to race, which is and always has been non-issue for me.

So hopefully this should go someway to explain why I was particularly annoyed at having to tick the 'White-British' box on my application form. Arguably I could have left that bit blank, but unless I change my name to Muhammed Khan, It's quite unlikely to pass as that of, say a British Pakistani. On a side note, I couldn't help noticing the strange subcategories under 'White'. They were:

-British -Irish -Bosnian -Kosovan/Albanian -Roma

Seems an odd little selection to me. British, representing a good 65 million people is a very broad category compared to say Kosovan. I don't know how many Kosovan/Albanians there are in the UK, but I'd hazard a guess that they aren't in the top 5 largest White population groups. Surely Yugoslav, or just Slav, would be more inclusive? Maybe my local council feel that Kosovans are under-represented in its local services are therefore more deserving of being given jobs.

Maybe I'm just bitter at not scoring any minority points in the application form (If they'd included sexuality of course, I could have ticked all boxes...). But to be honest, I just don't like feeling that I'm ruling myself out of employment by being white. I don't like knowing that my potential employer will be able to turn me down because I don't fit in their race quota. To me, equal rights should be equal - there is nothing positive about discrimination; and I don't just call it discrimination. No, equality is a two-way street, to me, this is racism.

'Ciderite'

Fresh from writing this post, I was quick to enlist the help of a local primary school child to develop an improved version of this type of diversity monitoring survey. The winning design comes from Dwain Pike of Scumbag Street Primary - not chosen by merit, but simply because Dwain was decided to be the most diverse member of the class (his mother being something of a 'loose woman' known for producing children rarely of the same colour of her husbands at the time). His pitiful attempt is shown below.

Possibly the most elaborate piece of procrastination ever....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7498442.stm





The video shows a group of Portugese students who have managed to engineer a robot for light cleaning duties. That sounds about right.





Personally I prefer other, similarly sophisticated methods to avoid menial housework. When dealing with mess, there's always the old; "Brush it under the fridge, noone will know"; "Put it all in that room we never use", and of course my favourate; "Well seeing as this one is so full, wouldn't it be easier just to buy another bin".



All I need is something to stop me setting the oven alight every time I use the grill.....

A Defeat for Religious Liberty...

.... by which I mean our collective freedom from religion, and in particular the Dark Age bigots who arrogantly believe they have a right to impose their backwards 'values' upon the rest of us.

The case I am referring to is that of Lillian Ladele, newest addition to my long list of religious gits. Ladele is a civil registrar of weddings who has refused to conduct civil partnerships between same-sex couples, because it is 'against her religion' (details can be found here).

Much has already been written of this outrage, the blogosphere being filled with almost unanimous condemnation of Ladele - and rightly so. But looking into her reasoning in full, it does set quite a worrying precedent, not least from a legal perspective. After all, what is religious belief other than a set of 'values' or ideas which the believer holds to be true regardless of any evidence or opinion to the contrary. In short it is an ideology, and one that doesn't accept dissent at that.

One can only assume that the type of 'religious liberty' Ladele was on about was one wherein everybody is allowed to hold whatever moronic beliefs they like, under the umbrella defence of "but it's my religion!" Under such circumstances one would presumably obey all the laws of the land - unless of course you didn't really fancy one or two of them, in which case try the 'against my religion line'.

Now lets say I have a fundamental and devout belief in not being detained against my will. Presumably this would grant me freedom from arrest and inprisonment. A sort of theologically mandated opt-out if you like. Don't fancy paying any taxes? Blame it on a god/gods - you're really sorry but he/she/they aren't so keen on the true faithful paying for the support of the non-faithful. They don't believe you? Make up some silly rituals and wear a daft hat - that should do it....

Obviously such a scenario is ridiculous, but no more so than the decision made by the employment tribunal which decided Ladele could opt-out of UK law and the responsibilities of her job. A central pillar of good democracy should be that everyone is equal under the rule of law - whether they like those laws or not.

In fact.... especially if they don't like those laws.

Bloody Brilliant Video on Evolution

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc

N.B. Some knowledge of taxonomy is vital. Even then, your head may hurt, mine certainly did.

United We Stand

Well then, today is the 4th of July; Independence Day of course. This was something I didn't realise at first, having more pressing matters at hand. Nonetheless it was about an hour ago when I first saw the fireworks.

Interesting, since I live in Birmingham, UK - not Birmingham, Alabama (even if Google Earth disagrees).

Not that I'm complaining. I visited the United States nearly three years ago and since then have become quite a fan of it. That would be of the nation itself of course - of some of its current inhabitants I have quite different opinions. Can one make a distinction between the two? Yes, I believe so. The United States I love is the one celebrated on July 4th - the world's first major democracy, the first independent New World state, the most secular nation on Earth (at the time.

The land of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, tolerance, opportunity and optimism. When I visited, I saw monuments on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, monuments at a place called Washington Crossing. Anybody who has studied American Revolutionary history in the slightest detail will know that General Washington's crossing of the Delaware was one of the turning points in the whole revolutionary war. It led to his surprise attack on the Yorktown garrison and eventually the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and the World we know today.

That's the brief history lesson over. To me, as a British tourist, it felt odd sitting in front of the museum's television screen (this is the US after all), watching a dramatisation of events where the British are naturally 'the bad guys'. Nevertheless, I know for a fact that I am a revolutionary sympathiser - "No taxation without representation" is a statement I wholeheartedly agree with. If I were an American citizen I would no doubt be proud of my countries rich and noble history. The folks at the museum evidently were (unlike British museums which seem to have a strong phobia of saying anything positive about Britain's role in world history*).

This brings me to my final point. In the world today there seems to be plenty of anti-Americanism, especially from the unholy alliance of the loony left and the Islamofascists. Without doubt this is due to - or at least blamed on - the foriegn policy of the Bush administration (along with his policy, or lack of one, on climate change). This has also led to an enormous amount of interest in Obama vs McCain '08 from global audiences. Given my personal admiration of the principles on which the United States was founded, I'm increasingly required to justify it against the past 8 years.

As a geologist, I'm well aware that 8 years, is a very very short time indeed (geologically speaking). 232 years seperate 1776 and 2008 - the Bush administration accounts for only 3.4% of that. Is it really right for Europeans and other people to declare that they hate America based on 3.4% of its national history? The paraphrase the comedian Al Murray, "America started as a good idea, it's just got a bit out of hand". Just because I happen to love the principles of the American Revolution, doesn't mean I supported war against Iraq. Equally, the 'war on terror' doesn't invalidate the finer parts of the American Dream.

Even if warmonger McCain gets in, and the nation implodes in a frezy of foriegn adventures, terrorist witchhunts and loony christian fundamentalism, I hope someone, somewhere, will remember those Founding Fathers and their bold dream of a land of the free.

Happy Independence Day


* Think endless slavery exhibitions and irritating gestures of apology we're encouraged to make. Anyone would be forgiven for forgeting that it was Great Britain which first banned the trade in slaves, followed by the role the Royal Navy playing in eradicating it across the high seas.

African Tyrant to face justice

No, not that one.

"The ex-vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been extradited to The Hague to face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity" BBC

Interesting that this should occur in the same week as Mugabe declared himself the winner of the Zimbabwe presidential election. You know, the one with only one candidate. "crimes against humanity"? Sounds familiar that. While I'm not denying that our Congolese friend should be in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC), I'd be more than happy to see Mugabe alongside him.

Rhodesia* used to be the breadbasket of Africa, so much so that it exported food across the continent and across the world. It has abundant mineral reserves just waiting to be exploited. Now it's people starve and inflation is at god-knows what level. I cannot doubt that Africa has fared worse under its home-grown leaders than it ever did under colonial masters. Liberal interventionism isn't exactly popular post-Iraq, and Britain doesn't exactly have the means to launch a full scale liberation of Rhodesia. All that the West can really do is sit and watch the African nation implode, slowly dragging the rest of the continent down with it.

I'd dearly like to see Mugabe on trial; held to account for his crimes commited in the name of sovereignty - not to mention the economic genocide carried out against white Rhodesians. But given his advanced age, and the tyrants that have gone unpunished before, I won't hold my breath.


* On a side note, I've never been too happy when uppity regimes take it on themselves to rename older establishments. Hence my preference of Rhodesia - honouring Cecil Rhodes after all - over the ridiculous revisionist Zimbabwe. Same goes for Bombay-Mumbai, etc.

Obama aiming for the Faith-head vote

From the BBC News site:

"US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has said he would expand George W Bush's programme of involving religious groups in government initiatives."

Just brilliant. So not only have the Democrats (supposedly the US' more liberal party) picked the candidate least able to beat McCain, he's getting into bed with the same fundamentalist lunatics as the Bush administration. Why is it that not one US politician can seem to remember that the United States is supposed to have a complete seperation between church and state? It's written down in the Constitution after all, not to mention countless other pieces of paper (Treaty of Tripoli anyone?). Jefferson himself was an Atheist, or at least a Deist - at any rate he clearly didn't envisage a US where religious groups set the national agenda.

I believe politics students have a word for states where faith determines policy - they're called theocracies.

A question I'd have to ask about this 'council' of religious groups that young Barack is planning. Will all groups be given equal representation? I mean, you could just have all Baptists, the dominent denomination in the south. Let's not forget the Methodists, or the Lutherans. What about the Catholics, I imagine they'd need representation too. Better not leave out the Jews (Orthodox and Reformed, naturally) - or the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Scientologists, etc, etc, etc...

O-barmy

Obviously this could get very very complicated. Well, if they all claim to be the One True Faith, I guess they'll have to be given some representation. Then there's us atheists and agnostics - obviously atheist citizens in the US can expect to be properly represented on this council (though since this is the US, maybe not). Yes, this make take some thought...

To be entirely honest, it's not as if I wasn't expecting this. Religious fundamentalism would appear to be growing so rapidly within the United States' interior that you would be forgiven for thinking that the entire nation is intent on throwing itself back into a dark age - one with cars and fast food, obviously. Therefore we see the inherant flaw with democracy; the winning candidate will only ever be as good as the electorate. Right now the members of the electorate Obama is trying to appeal to are the conservative religious types - hence this new statement suggesting that one of things I hated most about the Bush administration may not be disappeaing for good come November.