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people “like him“
He doesn’t mean there are no men in those roles. He doesn’t mean there are no white people in those roles.
Yes I did, and no it did not say “basically what you said”.
Well, one of us is misreading it. "Not for me" is referring to education, not career paths. What's the point in exams when I can just get a job with my dad?
Maybe (NB I said "maybe") there's a greater desire amongst black &c families for the kids to better themselves? Maybe crossing the channel in a dinghy to start a better life gives you a bit more drive than being dragged up on a council estate.
Hell, maybe it's just optimism. The ethnic kids believe things can be better, the white kids are resigned to the idea that it'll always be shit for them?
Maybe we're more interested in going to uni to get laid and wasted. Maybe we're just lazy bastards. Who knows.
I wouldn’t describe him as “of the Left”. You might I suppose.
A Republican might very well do so…
I failed my 11+, so was denied the opportunity to go to grammar school, and then university.
But, you know what? I’m not entirely sure that going to university would have gained me anything, I’ve had a number of fairly well paid jobs, and I’m perfectly aware of my own limits - jobs paying substantially more would require levels of responsibility that I’m just not comfortable with, or feel I’m actually capable of doing well. I see the sort of stress that results, and I know that’s just not for me.
Other people are very likely to be different.
Maybe we’re just lazy bastards. Who knows.
Anecdotally, I've probably temp employed over 50 blokes from various backgrounds including a bunch of Eastern Europeans (hardest working, but prone to the odd cock up) over the past 6-7 years.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the laziest and least reliable was a black guy . Absolute nightmare in every aspect, from bringing personal issues to work - he just didn't want to work, even though he was getting a reasonable wage of £180 a day
Probably just a co-incidence and he could have been an unlucky appointment regardless of his ethnicity. I still wouldn't select/not select anyone based on the colour of their skin though, that's ridiculous - albeit, I would imagine many on here would believe that would be the case with me. Show me you can do the job and you'll get the job
Cougar
Well, one of us is misreading it. “Not for me” is referring to education, not career paths. What’s the point in exams when I can just get a job with my dad?
Yes I should have said higher education in that post but it's the same difference in this context- university provides a good career, a good career provides a means of social mobility.
This brings me back to the original comment that I objected to (and I apologise for getting cross on that post, but it is a subject close to my heart).
"they’re highly unlikely to be in poverty because they are white."
Go here and at the very least watch the two linked videos, which illustrate this very concisely, the statistics are stark:
https://ukparliament.shorthandstories.com/disadvantaged-white-working-class-pupils-/index.html
Anecdotally, I’ve probably temp employed over 50 blokes from various backgrounds including a bunch of Eastern Europeans (hardest working, but prone to the odd cock up) over the past 6-7 years.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the laziest and least reliable was a black guy .
His ‘background’ was ‘black’?
“they’re highly unlikely to be in poverty because they are white.”
Go here and at the very least watch the two linked videos, which illustrate this very concisely, the statistics are stark:
I’ll watch it, but could you summarise the key points of their whiteness that you feel makes the difference
(as opposed to their location and/or their economic/and or class/cultural disadvantages?)
ie if you could just briefly detail the ‘white’ parts of their disadvantage?
no matter how hard he works, those career paths are not for people “like him“.
Writing as a man who was a boy from a multi-generational working class background this rings a bell so loudly that it deafens my other thoughts. The ‘path’ of being a scientist or doctor or even an engineer was just crazy talk in the school/estates where I grew up, socialised, spent my formative years.
When you left state school you went to a factory or else walked into a job via a relative or else signed on/YTS.
Job done. ‘Higher learning’ was ‘above station’ (“ who does he think he is?”) and treated with suspicious (even as ‘traitorous’)
I was somewhat of a traitor, it turned out. But I had a wild-card role-model in a rural yet Europhile grandfather who was not typical in his views towards foreigners (or towards Brits).
As a kid I was fully exhorted to believe that my ethnicity had something to do with it, inasmuch as ‘ethnicity’ is both cultural (in my case working-class) and racial. For us that was a deep, accepted cultural norm of white British entitlement, and one that went hand-in-glove with suspicion towards non-whites.
My culture allotted a status to non-whites/foreigners. The status was measured along a spectrum/stereotype.
We held other white Northern Europeans at the ‘top’ (although still ‘less than’ White British) and then going down through Southern French, then Italian, Spanish (latin men were viewed as somewhat ‘coloured’), ‘oriental’ (weird, suspicious, insectile) and so on with Indians, blacks and ****stanis all falling joint ‘bottom’.
Generally speaking my racial and patriarchal culture of ‘play the white man’ had ‘them’ (foreigners) characterised (simultaneously, paradoxically) as:
A. Undeserving, scheming, idle, underling benefit scroungers who get the ‘red carpet’ to whisk them to all of their idle gains in order to help them overpopulate and ‘take us over’.
and (not ‘or’)
B. Insectile hard-workers who take all of ‘our’ jobs, and also terrible healthcare workers who can't do the job as well as our white nurses and doctors yet were given the jobs as a ‘favour’ out of ‘political-correctness’.
So here are two questions for you (rhetorical or direct, ie if you’d care to give some thought or even answer I’d be delighted either way):
1. How do you think I as a kid learned to racially-identity?
2. How do you imagine that I as a kid learned that study, FE/university, languages, travel, enterprise, ‘bettering myself’ etc were ‘not for me’?
It's a sickening example of divide and conquer where the Tories shut down Sure Start centres, youth clubs, strip local councils to the bone, screw up the NHS, avoid taxes like it's an Olympic Sport, then try and claim the problem is anti-white wokeness. Nothing to do with poor areas being shafted of course.
Probably just a co-incidence
Only probably though eh. FFS 🥺
It’s a sickening example of divide and conquer where the Tories shut down Sure Start centres, youth clubs, strip local councils to the bone, screw up the NHS, avoid taxes like it’s an Olympic Sport, then try and claim the problem is anti-white wokeness. Nothing to do with poor areas being shafted of course.
/thread
His background was ‘black’?
Wow, misquote of the century. The spectrum of blokes I've employed were from different backgrounds - some reasonably privileged, some from less privileged backgrounds, some from traditional British cultures, some from different ethnic cultures.
Only probably though eh. FFS 🥺
Yes, probably. Maybe his cultural upbringing bred an attitude of a poor attidude to work ethics. I don't know, as much as you don't, so don't start with that shit
Maybe his cultural upbringing bred an attitude of a poor attidude to work ethics. I don’t know, as much as you don’t, so don’t start with that shit
The fact that you work with one black guy who's lazy and start thinking that might be evidence of a generally poor attitude to work amongst black people speaks volumes.
Yes, probably. Maybe his cultural upbringing bred an attitude of a poor attidude to work ethics. I don’t know, as much as you don’t, so don’t start with that shit
Drawing a conclusion from a sample of one is just daft.
NB Your previous post does come across very much as 'I'm not a racist but...'.
And when I say 'as' it's pretty much an open confession.
The fact that you work with one black guy who’s lazy and start thinking that might be evidence of a generally poor attitude to work amongst black people speaks volumes.
It was an anecdotal response to Cougars post that maybe 'we' are just lazy, based on my experience of employing dozens of different people. I've stated that it wouldn't cloud future recruitment judgements. If that was my general view of black people, then I wouldn't consider them, would I?
'I'm not racist because I might consider employing a black person' 😂
@multi21 from your link
The White working class are by far the largest group of disadvantaged pupils
There were around 982,950 White pupils eligible for free school meals in 2020, compared to 139,720 Asian students as the next largest group
Few paragraphs in and there already seems to be an agenda. Those are absolute numbers not accounting for what proportion of pupils are white to start with (the vast majority). I wonder why they've chosen to highlight that statistic.
The stats for working class kids in general are bad, but hey, let's try and stoke up racial tensions to disguise that fact.
so don’t start with that shit
The shit that you literally started?
Whatever you actually meant (or claim to have meant) you've surely got to recognise how your anecdote of "I knew this black guy once and he was lazy" sounds?
It was an anecdotal response to Cougars post that maybe ‘we’ are just lazy
You do understand, don't you, that I wasn't talking about every British white person or every British black person? It was a generalisation, this whole tangental discussion is statistics.
Anyway. Doctor Who, then? Who's going to be the next Doctor do we think? A giraffe?
Also in that report, one of the main reasons for the supposed white disadvantage is that poor white kids often tend to be in less urban areas where services are harder to access.
So, they could have called the report 'why rural disadvantaged kids are falling behind', but obviously that doesn't help with inflaming a culture war does it.
Anyway. Doctor Who, then? Who’s going to be the next Doctor do we think? A giraffe?
Soon it will be illegal to marry anyone of your own species.
His background was ‘black’?
Wow, misquote of the century.
Really?
I’ve probably temp employed over 50 blokes from various backgrounds including a bunch of Eastern Europeans (hardest working, but prone to the odd cock up) over the past 6-7 years.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the laziest and least reliable was a black guy
You definitely said backgrounds (my bold) not skin-colours. So no, I don’t misquote you.
Colour of skin is irrelevant to any judgement of anyone in my opinion, get that.
However, different cultural upbringings, or even regional and social (white) upbringings might, nay, will definitely have a bearing on attitudes to work in many cases.
This is the slightly tangential subject of discussion in this thread, isn't it?
I opened this link expecting to see a load of racism from "Dave from Sheffield".
Oh look 😳
You sound remarkably like Ron Atkinson Dave:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/apr/25/race.football1
Slave traders had no issues with giving black people work. Nor did the employers in car plants in aparteid South Africa, nor do employers who pay blacks lower wages for the same job or assign them to inferior positions despite higher qualifications. In my experience people who employ blacks are as likely to be as racist as anyone else. If you want an anecdote, possibly the most racist employment I've had was industrial cleaning, blacks were given the worst tasks.
However, different cultural upbringings, or even regional and social (white*) upbringings might, nay, will definitely have a bearing on attitudes to work in many cases.
I can relate to that. Our ‘play the white man’ upbringing definitely co-opted ‘whiteness’. And the gender supremacy. We never heard or said ‘play the white woman’.
Which neatly brings us back to Dr Who. A bloody middle class white woman playing a sodding working-class (shhhh) white man’s role? It’ll be a gay transgendered black woman next (<—sarcasm)…and then what shall poor me do for a role-model?
* which begs the question, if there is a ‘white’ attitude to work then which white is the whitest?
Daz from Manchester?
Hugo from Stoke?
Terry from Diss?
Gail from Cork?
Chris from Cornwall?
Betty from Birmingham?
Pippa from Chelsea?
Bob from Bromsgrove?
Dave from Peasmore?
Which of them has the ‘genuine’ ethnic whiteness? You know, like the ‘genuine’ ethnic blackness?
982,950 White pupils eligible for free school meals in 2020, compared to 139,720 Asian students as the next largest group
Out of interest, what is the per-capita (UK white vs asian) eligibility according to those figures? (Not a rhetorical question, I’m terrible at maths)
Anyone good at maths?
Angry white dudes, eh.
Few paragraphs in and there already seems to be an agenda. Those are absolute numbers not accounting for what proportion of pupils are white to start with (the vast majority). I wonder why they’ve chosen to highlight that statistic.
Quick Google suggests that 80% of the UK population are recorded as "white British", and 7.5% are recorded as "Asian", just to put those numbers into some sensible context
* which begs the question, if there is a ‘white’ attitude to work then which white is the whitest?
Again, misquoted
Certain social white upbringings will generate a POOR attitude to work
I'm from a poor (as in not well off) council estate upbringing. I chose to rebel against my parents life of benefits and be different in my work ethic.
Anyway, I'm a few glasses of red in, so I'm not shying away from anything said, I'll re-visit in the morning, read through and respond accordingly.
I opened this link expecting to see a load of racism from “Dave from Sheffield”.
I presume you know me then Tom (by stating my name). Where have we met?
Oh and couldn't give a flying fig who plays Dr Who - the Dr's reincarnation could be in any form. James Bond however, should always be a slightly misogynistic white British alpha male. It's how it was written, nothing more
Edited. Apologies, regardless of viewpoints (of which I find yours abhorrent) I'm letting my anger at a horrific week at home to sling mud.
....I dont know you past your posts on here, of which your photo hosting username gives away your name.
An EDL rally I guess 🙄
Never been to one, as obviously, neither have you. Come on, man up, how do you know me?
Anyone good at maths?
Regardless of absolute numbers, the percentages don't change so long as you have sufficient sample size. Eg, your anecdotal one black man back there would yield "100% are lazy." The larger the sample size, the more reliable your results. (I'm looking at you, L'Oreal.)
James Bond however, should always be a slightly misogynistic white British alpha male. It’s how it was written, nothing more
It's much more than just misygonisitic though, the early stuff was blatantly racist - I can't comment on more recent editions, I hope they've improved. There are some classics in there. At the meal in Her Majesty's Secret Service, what does the black girl get to eat? That's right, a banana. Remember the black ape woman in Diamonds and the slave décors? Then there was the less than sympathetic Japanese stereotyping in the rocket thing, and steroetypical gypseys in... .
Society is moving on, keep up, even Bond has to.
The ONS stats on child poverty don't seem to support the idea that white children are disadvantaged. Quite the opposite when compared to Bangladeshi and ****stani heritage children, for example.
Ah, good old identity politics. Serves its purpose doesn't it? Even this thread is an example of the circle-jerk arguments it creates all the while nothing actually gets done to address the issues that affect the poorest communities and groups in our nation.
The middle classes too busy trying to be right about their chosen talking points as always, irrespective of their political leanings.
^ I think that’s a lazy way out of addressing the varied points raised here.
ie I (for one example) am putting in honest effort trying best I can to openly address my own experience as a white working class kid who ‘hasn’t done very well for himself’ (for a number of reasons, and many could be attached to my class, ethnicity etc as well as my cultural and regional options and norms during development/education/post-education/social mobility. A very small percentage of my school stream went on to University. It was the most unusual thing to expect. None of my family or extended family went to university bar one member.
If you could please answer my questions about that (and/or ask me questions) then maybe you could help us to break the ‘circle’?
It's not, it is simply an observation of the state of play of public discourse.
It isn't getting better because the polarisation of society means that 'debates' are merely about being right, not about figuring out any meaningful way to address issues. We split problems into their neat little identity groups telling ourselves lies about who has it harder.
As a young Asian lad growing up with other Asian and white kids on a shitty estate, there was no difference, we were scum to anyone who didn't live there.
I'm not denying the existence of privilege, but it is very much a middle class first world problem that helps people feel right on about helping us poor brown folk.
But I'm sure I've got some internalised racism or some such bollocks that a proponent of CRT would tell me. Nothing more I like that being told how I think and feel by my betters.
^ I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then?
We split problems into their neat little identity groups telling ourselves lies about who has it harder.
Agreed. Like I say, I was a ‘traitor’ to that cause. And I still remember the ‘problems’, both real and imagined. Doesn't that begin to address those problems, by identifying them? So why deny that they are being explored here, even as you again pointedly avoid that discussion in favour of finger-pointing? To prove yourself ‘right’?
It's the Internet chap, nothing ever changes, this thread will go the way of all the other threads on any contentious subject.
I rather keep doing my day job because that's about trying to make a difference, not fluff an ego on a forum.
Well said relapsed_mandalorian, you hit all the nails on the head imo - straight to the point and spot-on correct.
Makes a refreshing change from the usual endless confused waffle.
What would you have us do differently, how do we fix this? Or at least, how can we try and help?
I’m not denying the existence of privilege, but it is very much a middle class first world problem that helps people feel right on about helping us poor brown folk.
Maybe among some people but that's a pretty shitty cynical attitude towards people trying to do the right thing and not be dicks to each other. You're basically offering nothing of any value in this thread either so I'm not sure why you think you're above everyone else posting here.
I’m not sure why you think you’re above everyone else posting here.
Nothing more I like than being told how I think and feel by my betters.
Interesting points raised p7. may I ask what age you are?
My own experience of school in the 70s where I was one of a very small minority of middle class kids from a small middle class enclave surrounded by public housing in glasgow ( Darnly arden candwardric merrilee and the bit I lived in Muirend) We all went to the local comnprehensive
because this was that short period of true comprehensive education we all went to the local school - Hillpark
But because of this middle class enclave going to university was something that happened in my school and those middle class kids were an "example" to the rest. I am still in contact with a few of my school friends. One doctor - from a very working class background, one scientist - middle class, one town planner - working class etc etc Probably 20% of the school went to university in one form or another and many of those from the working class backgrounds
I very strongly believe the thatcherite "choice" agenda in schools wrecked this because after that all the middle class kids went to shawlands academy ( also a "comp") instead despite it being actually a much worse school but it had "academy" in its name and the middle class parents could be sure their kids did not have to mix with "oiks"
The result was Hillpark no longer had these middle class kids. Going to university no longer was a part of the ethos. Chances for those working class kids declined, it became harder to recruit teachers as teachers like to teach in an environment where kids go to uni and the result was that the school standards collapsed
this school however was 99% white
So for me one of the key things to reduce underacheivement is a true comprehensive system - the "choice" agenda in schools actually ended up wrecking social mobility as schools went from true comprehensives to split along class lines. I am certain that now those bright lads I knew from the schemes would find it much harder to get to university without those "role models" of families with expectations
My pal who became a doctor has told me that. My parents were the only people he knew that had been to university and apparently they gave him good advice support and helped him see the possibilities. that just would not happen now
Ediucation is about a heck of a lot more than just exam results.
the other aspect of this is the huge costs now of going to university
My partner came from a very working class family, they had no money and a huge fear of debt. she went to university and got a law degree - the first of her family to do so because then you got grants and no debt. she worked all thru uni
she would not have gone to university under the current scheme. taking on all that debt would have be a complete barrier
So my take from all this is that the thacherite policies of the late 70s and 80s destroyed social mobility via education by removing role models from the schools where working class folk went
What would you have us do differently, how do we fix this? Or at least, how can we try and help?
For me the starting point is to go back to a true comprehensive system in schools and a return to debt free further education
Absolutely what TJ said.
Good post TJ, makes a lot of sense.
Nothing more I like than being told how I think and feel by my betters.
I've never claimed to be anyone's better, and he's literally just told us what he thinks.
I rather keep doing my day job because that’s about trying to make a difference, not fluff an ego on a forum.
Sounds very much like fluffing an ego to me.
I've done many years of IRL youth/community work in all sorts of extremely deprived areas including almost entirely white areas, and almost entirely asian areas, and in PRUs etc - so I don't really appreciate being lectured about the real world by someone who just pops up to slate middle-class 'do-gooders'.
I think one of the issues here is there is a significant difference between an individuals experiences and what happens over populations
None of the barriers are insurmountable to an individual but those barriers and expectations making it harder means across populations the effects can be seen
Ernie - I would be interested in your take on this