I watched part of a TV celebrity quiz show recently. The money won was to be donated to a charity selected by the winning celebrity. You all know the format. The charity selected by a black contestant was the Afro Caribbean Leukaemia Trust. This kind of grated on me somewhat. Why on earth is there a charity set up that favours only the Afro Caribbean community? Surely this is part of the fuel that keeps the positive discrimination fire alight. If someone wanted to set up a charity that favoured only white folks then there would be all sorts of questions asked. In fact, I do not believe The Charity Commission would even entertain the idea of an application from such an organisation.
To be clear, I am not a racist. But, although I do not condone or fall within this subsection of society, I can understand the mindset of those people who use the positive discrimination lean on things in areas such, say, recruitment in the police service to wave the flag of racism in a way that they feel is a justified and proportionate response. Yes, it is a good thing to have full representation from all areas of the community but is it still a good thing if the person selected for a high position in government/civil service/police/whatever was chosen for their ethnicity, religion (or lack of) or sexual orientation? No, it isn't. The best person for the job should be based on skills and ability.
Going against the grain of Positive Discrimination creates an easy target for those who like to shoot the "you are a racist" bullet but I cannot help but feel that it is partly due to the rising number of publicised cases of positive discrimination that support for organisations such as the BNP is swelling. Perhaps those whose opinions are swayed in this way lack a certain amount of intellect and are possibly less well educated as others, but nevertheless, support for the far-right does appear to be growing. Maybe in a generation or two the momentum gathered will be harder to slow down. A worrying thought.
What really prompted me to post this was not actually the contestant. That only provoked me into thinking some thoughts. What actually pushed me to write this was that after making a little effort to look further I discovered that a treatment for leukaemia suffers involves a bone marrow transplant. An afro Caribbean sufferer can only receive marrow from a donor of similar ethnicity. So my lack of education caught me out here. The charity does deserve to exist and does deserve to receive funds from all who wish to give. I shall bung them a fiver if only to make myself feel better for jumping the gun.
To be clear, I am not a racist. But, although I do not condone or fall within this subsection of society, I can understand the mindset of those people who use the positive discrimination lean on things in areas such, say, recruitment in the police service to wave the flag of racism in a way that they feel is a justified and proportionate response. Yes, it is a good thing to have full representation from all areas of the community but is it still a good thing if the person selected for a high position in government/civil service/police/whatever was chosen for their ethnicity, religion (or lack of) or sexual orientation? No, it isn't. The best person for the job should be based on skills and ability.
Going against the grain of Positive Discrimination creates an easy target for those who like to shoot the "you are a racist" bullet but I cannot help but feel that it is partly due to the rising number of publicised cases of positive discrimination that support for organisations such as the BNP is swelling. Perhaps those whose opinions are swayed in this way lack a certain amount of intellect and are possibly less well educated as others, but nevertheless, support for the far-right does appear to be growing. Maybe in a generation or two the momentum gathered will be harder to slow down. A worrying thought.
What really prompted me to post this was not actually the contestant. That only provoked me into thinking some thoughts. What actually pushed me to write this was that after making a little effort to look further I discovered that a treatment for leukaemia suffers involves a bone marrow transplant. An afro Caribbean sufferer can only receive marrow from a donor of similar ethnicity. So my lack of education caught me out here. The charity does deserve to exist and does deserve to receive funds from all who wish to give. I shall bung them a fiver if only to make myself feel better for jumping the gun.