Just two days after US civil rights leader Rev’d Jesse Jackson called for affirmative action on a visit to Britain, Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper (pictured) has responded by backing the idea to increase racial diversity in the police.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan Howe called for a form of affirmative action in June as the only realistic way of changing the composition of his force which was so out of step with multicultural London.
London’s deputy mayor for policing, Stephen Greenhalgh, recently rejected the idea at a meeting organised by the Stephen Lawrence Trust which I attended however it looks like the Conservative view could be in a minority now that Labour, the Met police and Rev’d Jackson are backing it.
This presents a challenge to the Liberal Democrats who have traditionally rejected the notion of affirmative action.
A key reason why many Lib Dems reject it is because fundamentally they haven’t grasped what it is.
Far from being ‘positive discrimination’, affirmative action is about picking from equally-qualified candidates so that where a BAME and White applicant are tied the BAME person is chosen in order to address under-representation.
And the reason why under-representation exists is because of historical and existing negative discrimination which means the White applicant is more likely to be chosen.
Another aspect of affirmative action is that it can, and should, only apply for a period in order to try and eliminate negative discrimination. After that, it is not needed and should be scrapped to see whether attitudes have changed sufficiently to eradicate prejudices in selection naturally.
Affirmative action, when applied to equally-qualified candidates, should not require a change in the law and talk of legislation is, in that sense, an added legal reassurance to employers that they will not face employment tribunal action from the losing candidate.
Of course the same employers risk tribunal cases today from BAME candidates who are unfairly rejected in favour of equally-qualified White candidates but that does not stop a high proportion of employers exercising their prejudice anyway as figures of grossly unequal racial outcomes in employment suggest.
However if a new law is needed to give that extra security and encouragement to bosses not to discriminate against BAME applicants then so be it.
In essence affirmative action is , as Rev’d Jackson never tires of saying, about a level playing field, where the rules are clear and the goal-posts are the same size.
Far from ‘positive discrimination’ it is about non-discrimination. However in order to practice non-discrimination those who have historically benefited from discrimination – White applicants – will lose out.
And where talent from all backgrounds have an equal chance of succeeding then those who enjoy an advantage by dint of being White will have to accept they are now competing on a level playing field. They won’t be disadvantaged in real terms, only by comparison to an unfair advantage today.
Opponents of action on the basis of choosing the BAME applicant over an equally-qualified – but not more qualified applicant – are mostly unwittingly really defending White privilege and the status quo of institutional racism,
That defence of White privilege is not always conscious or deliberate. Often it is an unthinking and uninformed gut reaction against any form of ‘discrimination’ as a result of confusion and lack of understanding.
In other words not all opponents harbor racist attitudes, but they are united by failing to grasp the concept. And where an ‘anti’ reaction is not accompanied by recognition of the scale of existing negative discrimination and any consideration of alternatives they are certainly guilty of a lack of care about tackling unequal racial outcomes.
The key word in affirmative action is ‘action’, and there’s nothing illiberal about that.
Labour’s embrace of the affirmative action debate, which should be fleshed out in a speech by Cooper today, throws the gauntlet down to British politics in general to move beyond gut reactions and devote attention to this idea.
I hope that gauntlet is picked up.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
