This article in the FT made me slightly upset as the author Michael Skapinker seems to say that affirmative action helps. No bloody way it does not. See my previous essay on this topic. I totally disagree with the fact that a government should start defining what a race is and be more specific in terms of devoting my tax pounds on something stupid like this. No. Sir NO!.
Also, curiously, for this author, minorities seem to be just blacks. What about British Chinese and British Indians, Sir? See here in the media. or in Business. Or is this minority business only fit for Black British? If not, then your argument falls rather flat, doesn't it? Just because we keep quiet, out of sight, quietly go about our business, trust in God and work very hard does not mean that you go about ignoring us.
Red Ken is a clown so he has a reason to be silly like this (take 300 quid taxi rides and then talk about congestion charging!), what's your excuse? I just want a taxi ride and nobody said that only white men can drive or remember the routes around Charing Cross.
Blithering idiots.
Merit should prevail
By Michael Skapinker
Published: October 22 2007 19:17 | Last updated: October 23 2007 08:37
London’s taxi drivers are famous for their distinctive cabs, their high fares and The Knowledge – the series of examinations they have to pass proving they know every street in the city within six miles of Charing Cross.
Ken Livingstone, London’s mayor, has noticed something else about London’s cabbies: they are almost all white men. Together with the London Development Agency, he has launched a project to change this.
“Around a third of Londoners are from an ethnic minority background and over half of Londoners are women. Yet only approximately 5 per cent of London’s taxi drivers are from black, Asian or minority ethnic communities and 1.6 per cent are women,” the mayor’s website says.
His project aims to help the under-represented groups become taxi drivers. They will still have to pass The Knowledge, but they will get support to do so.
Most of the help is small-scale. Buddy groups to study The Knowledge together. Mentors. Assistance with childcare. The most substantial offer is the loan of scooters and free fuel to get around while memorising all those streets.
Some of London’s taxi drivers have protested. They managed without any of this, they say – and it was not easy. It takes an average of three years to get through The Knowledge. They had to feed their families and pay their mortgages during that time without any help from the mayor.
The uproar should be no surprise. Programmes to redress racial and sexual imbalance are invariably controversial, as are many things done by Mr Livingstone.
But he is actually pretty limited in his ability to change the complexion of London’s cab drivers. British law bans “reverse discrimination”. Employers and public authorities can no more give special preference to an ethnic minority or female applicant than they can to a white man, even if their aim is to redress the overwhelmingly white, male make-up of their workplaces.
What is allowed is “positive action”: mentoring, open days, work placements – the sorts of things that Mr Livingstone is offering. But everyone still has to be judged equally at the point of recruitment.
This is in contrast with the US, with its long history of affirmative action in employment, education and the award of government contracts.
In 2003, the US Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan law school’s right to admit minority students over white applicants with superior grades and entrance examination scores.
The school was not allowed to consider an applicant’s race alone, but could regard it as one of a number of positive attributes. The court said that would-be lawyers benefited from being part of a diverse student body. It added, however, that preferences of this sort should no longer be necessary 25 years later.
In fact, neither the court nor America’s voters have been prepared to wait that long. Last year voters in Michigan voted for an initiative banning race from being taken into account in government hiring and public university admissions. California voted for a similar initiative as long ago as 1996.
This year the Supreme Court, its balance shifted by President George W. Bush’s appointments, narrowly held that schools in Louisville and Seattle could not consider pupils’ race alone when deciding on admissions.
Speaking for the majority, chief justice John Roberts said: “Government action dividing people by race is inherently suspect.” It reinforced the belief that people should be judged by the colour of their skin, he said.
Similar thinking explains much of the British reluctance to embrace US-style affirmative action. If it is wrong to appoint someone to a job because he is white or male, it is surely wrong to appoint someone because she is black or female.
There is also the effect on people from ethnic minorities who have succeeded on their own merits and whose achievements are diminished if people of similar backgrounds are offered special dispensation. Among those protesting at Mr Livingstone’s proposals were black taxi drivers making just this point.
The British approach may be more appealing on principle, but there is no getting away from the fact that America’s minorities have achieved more.
Britain has had a female head of government while the US has not (yet). But the UK has never had a black foreign secretary; the US has had two in a row, one of them female.
The UK has the occasional black corporate success story, such as Damon Buffini, head of the private equity firm Permira. But it has no black business leaders of the stature of Kenneth Chenault, chief executive of American Express, Richard Parsons of Time Warner or Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch.
Is it affirmative action that has made the difference in the US? Or just a determination to judge people on their merits? It would be nice to believe it was the latter.
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