Time for UK affirmative action?

‘Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, colour, religion, sex or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an under-represented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs. “Affirmative action” is action taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded’


Say the words affirmative action or positive discrimination and you will get disparaging looks for all quarters. Some whites see it as giving under qualified blacks jobs they don’t deserve and maybe can’t even do. Some blacks see it an admission that we are under qualified and stress that we should not accept favours but simply be ‘allowed’ to achieve all we can.


When I landed at Gatwick airport 20 plus years ago the concept of Affirmative Action was extremely distastefully to me. My understanding was that people from Africa and the Caribbean had resided in the UK for decades, centuries even, therefore I fully expected to see said peoples working and living comfortably at all level of UK social life. That’s not what I found.


My first assessment of UK based Blacks was not a good one. I just did not have a historical perspective which could explain why I saw more single mothers in Brixton than any day in downtown Kingston. Nor could I understand the crowds of black men spending days in betting shops or hanging out at the local chicken shops. My first real job was in the City of London, this too threw up more questions than answers, as I found myself almost totally surrounded by whites and when I did bump into another black person they too had the same question….where are the blacks?

Over the years I developed an excuse for this massive underachievement. My excuse was racism and low numbers. I convinced myself that since we made up less than 10% of the population and since the English practiced very covert racism that explained our under achievement.

I squarely fell into the group who saw Affirmation Action as wrong.


Two things have slowly changed that view.


A couple of years ago I attended a lecture by Robin Walker. Robin may not the most flamboyant speaker, but believe me with the knowledge he has, he does not need to be. I remember listening to Robin explain how the system here in the UK works when it comes to achievement. It goes like this.


The best, most qualified and experienced person of African descent will always start the day with a 5% handicap. Meanwhile the best, most qualified and experienced white person is always given a 5% head start. Now 5% may not seem like much, but this means that on any given day there is a minimum of 10% difference in favour of whites in every situation. So just to be equal the African must improve by 10% irrespective of levels already achieved. Further it means and please wrap your minds around this a white person who is 10% less capable is equal to an African and if we are equal you and I both know who will get the job. By the way I am only using 5% because I really can’t remember if Robin used 5% or 10%. In any event it is not difficult to understand that the actual percentage will vary depending on who is looking at the candidates. I suspect 5% is an acceptable minimum which is naturally applied UK wide. This explained the frustration and even departure of many UK blacks.


The second thing stemmed from a conversation I was having with Kwame, Lee and Viv about three months ago. I have used no last names to protect the innocent, but suffice to say if you don’t know these three black men then you are not living in the UK or at least London.


As is always the case when 4 vocal self assured black men meet, the topic of under achievement of people of African descent here in the UK was raised. Long story short I was educated on the role Affirmative Action can play and has played in the creation of a strong Black American middle class.


Education is key. When affirmative action ‘allowed’ masses of African Americas to educate themselves, it began a chain of events which we here in the UK can only dream about. The result of these events is a strong well educate upper middle class comprising of Judges, Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers, Lecturers, politicians, playwrights, business owners, Accounts etc who all found their place in American society. Suddenly black found themselves with that extra 11% and boy did they use it.


However the effect does not stop there. Because these people now had access to areas which before were totally white, they could and have left the ladder in place for the next generation and newly arriving immigrants. Critically they also began doing business with other blacks.

So if affirmative action was such a great success why has it not been used here in the UK? Well I have a theory which some of you may not like.


American racism has always been in your face, but here in the UK it has always been a little more covert. Not to mention the majority of blacks in the UK need only look two or three generations to find parents from other lands and I submit that those parents have injected into us a ‘mother England’ attitude which has stopped us from taking the UK to task over racism. Yep I said it. We just don’t take racism serious enough.

Covert racism has allowed the English man to get away to this day with way too much. The UK has had good race relation laws in place for decades, but those laws are just smoke screens to the very issues which affirmative action was designed to deal with.. Further the UK has a more intelligent form of racism because it’s racism is mixed into classism and thus does it’s nasty work often unnoticed because exponents of this racism can point to the under achievement of the white working class and claim that proves our poverty is not race based.


Now this is not to suggest the US has defeated racism, but US blacks are far better placed to fight racism because they have a decent financial base. Look at it this way. Yes the US may have a Black president, but still blacks suffer from racism, thus imagine the state of the UK where thoughts of a black Prime Minister are still laughed at.


So next time there is a movement for Affirmative Action here in the UK, you will see me in the front row.