Celebrating our diversity rather than discriminating for it
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2016-11-02 07:41:05 - Graham Ellis
I'm teaching a fantastic bunch of people this week - with origins from all over the world. Born in Lancashire, brought up in London and having lived half my life in Wiltshire, I'm almost certainly the most 'local' of this group. I celebrate their multiple cultures, genders and ages. I admire their excellent English when it's not their native tongue, their brightness to work at the job they do, and their sheer guts in some cases to overcome what I'm guessing are significant disabillities to them which make them an order of magnitude less fit than I am. The mix of age, colour, gender, physical condition, langauge and creed is something I celebrate - and each and every one of them would appear to be there on merit and not on quota from positive discrimination.
Quotas and positive discrimination - be it someting like all-woman shortlists for parliamnentary candidates, or job selection based in part on any of these factors - belittles the person or people selected. "You're only here because ..." may not be said, but if its thought or even suspected, it makes it very hard for the successful candidate to be initially seen on their qualities - more they might be seen as helping to fill a quota, whether or not they really were the very best candidate available to fulfill the role.
Last month, I looked into taking on a significant and very interesting contract for an organisation that's in the public sector - rarely have I seen a contract / role description so well suited to my background, and I would have loved it. I do know something of one of the other people who was interested in the contract too - but I was informed that when the bids were reviewed, none of the bidders was considered suitabe for the role and the organisation concerned will take another look. I'm worried that the organisation concerned has been very much "true Brit" based - as was the review team - but has recently been under some pressure to move to a more balanced scenario such as the one I described at the beginning, and I'm afraid I won't be surprised to find that the contract is won over the coming month or two by someone who doesn't meet all the contract criteria requested, but who happens to help widen the organisation's profile in terms of race / gender / culture / age / physical ability (should have played my "deaf in one ear" card, but I live with that!). I hope that whoever's selected, when I come into contact with her or him I'm rapidly impressed and realise than an excellent candidate was selected.
NOT the case I'm talking about above ... but what triggered me to write it up. "At the moment, a fifth of our Police Officers are women and less than one in 10 are from an ethnic minority. We think we can do better than this, and that’s where you come in. We particularly want to hear from women and black and minority ethnic applicants. We are holding workshops to guide you through the application and assessment process. In line with our Positive Action initiative, we are initially offering these workshops to women and black and minority ethnic applicants, who are under-represented in British Transport Police." Found at [here] by following a link from a Facebook ad showing a picture of police officers - not one of them a white male!