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Underground > Switchboard >

Police bringing in positive discrimination?

17:44 / 03.05.04

According to the Guardian today, the police are considering bringing in positive descrimination and promoting ethnic minorities up the ranks.

Police 'too white' to fight terror

Just wondered what people here thought about this.

Their justification is different from the usual reasons for bringing positive descrimination in... for worse reasons? better reasons?

I personally think that there are too many problems with this idea to make it worth while. It is just reverse racism, as far as I can see. But if no other ways of making the force more diverse and less racist work, is it justified?

20:48 / 04.05.04

aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

"positive discrimination," "affirimitive action," all I hear is "rascist, rascist, racist." when will people get it through their heads that valuing one human being over another solely because of his or her race is THE DEFINITION OF RASCISM, no matter what race is involved, no matter who is the minority and who is the majority? these idiots think that by giving minorities a leg up they're helping them out. that's bullshit. by giving minorities a leg up, they're putting underqualified people in positions that very qualified people are begging for, meerly because of the color of their skin.

OF COURSE THERE ARE GOING TO BE MORE WHITES THAN MINORITIES, THAT'S WHY WE HAVE THE TERMS "MAJORITY" AND "MINORITY" IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I understand that many minorities start off in worse conditions than majorities do (financially, educationally, etc.) but the only way to fix that problem is to fight it at the root - giving aid to the poor, improving the quality of schools (esp. in the innercity), and giving people a sense of hope and direction instead of making them feel abandoned (which many of them have been).

I'm sorry about the rant, but I have really strong feelings about this one.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:29 / 05.05.04

Great, this argument again.

Essentially, what is often called "positive discrimation" is usually just an attempt to reduce the amount of existing discrimation*, which - and this is key - is usually rendered invisible because it follows existing structures of power and race (meaning that the "white people are the majority so it can't be racist for the police to be mostly white!" argument can be employed, even in local areas where it clearly does not hold water). In general, then, this attempt to reduce existing racial discrimation has to be supported by anyone serious about reducting racism, although there is a real battle to be fought in terms of representation, specifically overcoming media misrepresentation which portrays such strategies as a threat to the employment prospects (read: continued privilege) of nice ordinary decent liberal white people (see also "political correctness").

However, I'd have to say that whether one hails the introduction of such measures in this case depends also on one's opinion of the police force and the so-called 'War On Terror'...

*Anyone who does not believe that there is a tremendous amount of existing racism in the police force must be unaware of the BBC 'Secret Policeman' documentary mentioned in the article above.

15:58 / 05.05.04

Flyboy: I don't know that it's necessarily connected to the war on terror/police force in general.. What do you mean?

I think there are valid arguments both ways. If the force is so racist they need to introduce this (and, well, obviously it is), then will officers promoted this way be targets of *added* racism and agression because they got a leg up of sorts?

16:54 / 05.05.04

Flyboy is of course bang on the money. But even if you have some nagging doubts concerning the sanity of political correctness, remember that the police are doing this in order to police more effectively.

Opposing this on the grounds of race is to imply that black people should not have a place in the police, even if they are better suited for the job than whites.