Positive Discrimination and the plight of the White Male Majority (Needlessly Long First Post)

Ok, so, the British Parliament is currently voting on the new "Equality Bill". This bill concentrates the sweet juicy essence of all sorts of odd bits of anti-discrimination legislation, and if that was all it did then it would be a wonderful piece of legal consolidation, exactly the kind of thing our government should be doing with it's time. However, one section seems so totally out of step with the spirit of the bill that you'd think it was slipped in by agents of the Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation.

This clause concerns, in a wonderfully PC piece of doublespeak, "Positive Discrimination". I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about here, and there are doubtless lots of upsides for society as a whole - but in my opinion, the only thing that really seperates it from plain old evil racist-sexist discrimination is the sinister emotional trick of the Politically Correct "Positive". In the 1950s workplace, White British Males were generally prefered over Female or Non-white job applicants (and often those who were the wrong shade of white, or those who had the wrong accent). Socially, White Men had all the breaks, all the freedom, all the power. From their point of view, that was pretty damn positive in terms of rights and opportunities, but you'd be hounded into resignation if you used the term "Positive Discrimination" to refer to Jim Crow Laws in Parliament.

Isn't all work-place discrimination a positive condition for one group? The key difference with this "positive" discrimination is that it limits one group to benefit all others. Is that right? Honestly, how many of the young men just leaving university, the ones who this will really effect, have ever personally owned slave-plantations? How many of them have forced Black citizens to use seperate facilities, how many seriously opposed the suffragette movement or conquered the free states of India? How, exactly, is limiting the freedom of a large segment of the population - based solely on qualities they have no control over - an acceptable thing for our elected representatives to even be considering?

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the Equality Bill proposes to allow employers to discriminate between potential employees on grounds of Race or Gender - Unless the discrimination is in favour of a White Male.

In practise - correct me if I'm wrong here - this will really mean one thing: If Baghwan Manku, Sarah Westfield, and Harry Windsor all apply for the same post, and they all have the same experience, the same qualifications, and the same work history, then the employers are free to hire Baghwan based solely on the colour of his skin, or Sarah based on the contents of her underwear, and they can even laugh in poor old Harry's face as they tell him as much. However, they are in seriously deep shit with the Diversity Commission if they even consider hiring Harold without a catalogue of solid evidence showing he is an objectively better candidate. That's what (atleast a small sub-set) of our government considers to be Equality.

In todays highly competetive job market, especially in professional fields, you will often be presented with several practically identical candidates for any open position. This legislation will create a situation wherein the best option for any company will be to hire a candidate outside of the Male/White-British group - essentially, 41% of the population is being muscled out in favour of the remaining 59%.

It's two thousand and fucking eight for christs sake - we're growing organs in labs, building plasma-powered flying saucers, and making decent headway towards developing a Longevity Vaccine. Isn't it time to put this bizarre insular Victorian world-view behind us? Fight fire with fire, sure, but lets face it, the fight is over. Few people seriously believe Women are inferior, or Whites are superior; Those few that do are shunned by society, forced to assosciate only with the other betrackied pariahs in the gutters and some of the dirtier pubs. All this move is going to accomplish is to brew resentment among that group, and among the many otherwise forward-thinking people who are negatively effected.

Say no (or, hell, yes, if you prefer) to a Racist-Sexist hegemony. Write to your MP today.

www.writetothem.com - Now you can contact your local member of parliament online. Go on, it'll take like 5 minutes tops.