From The Daily Mail.
The article is well worth a read, actually. Over the last decade or so, the Mail's journalism has improved (just ignore the Harry & Meghan stuff and the Home-Owner-Ist ranting) while the BBC's has worsened. At this rate, they should cross over soon.
Here's the highlight:
a) Where you live. Just about everybody in the UK (democratic, developed) is better off than the downtrodden majority in dictatorships, theocracies or kleptocracies.
b) When you were born. Land speculation aside, things have improved immeasurably in most countries over the last fifty years. Fewer wars, fewer famines, economic development, overall slow drift to democracy, increasing life expectancy etc.
So, while societies are 'a bit racist', a non-white (or disabled, or gay, or whatever) person in the UK today faces much less discrimination than a non-white person here fifty years ago; a non-white person in the UK is probably much better off than most people in the non-white parts of the world, which by population is most of it.
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I'm happy to report that I am in the top tier in all but one* of those categories (pure blind luck, as are most things in life, and I am eternally grateful for this), including the missing categories 'where you live' and 'when you were born' (*apart from socio-economic status, but I'm doing OK and nothing to complain about).
I can even tick the 'Protestant' box (albeit agnostic-atheist Protestant), but what the heck are Catholics doing in the same tier? Aren't they the next tier down? Can't we play this stupid game from the point of view of The Top Dogs, and we get to decide who is in the top tiers?
Christmas Day: readings for Year C
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7 comments:
This has been nicked from some publicly funded HR department's wall.
DH, according to the Mail, one of these PC schools hands it out in lessons.
This a US-centric chart. Native American might be least privileged race in the US or Canada. No way that's true in the UK. And the religion and origin bits are way off too. Just goes to show how dependent the privilege thing is on the informal "rules" of local society.
D, yes of course, this was handed out at American School in London. A massively expensive private school for Us expats in the UK.
Derek, it's not much different for the UK. The only ones that need tweaking are Ethnicity and Religion. With ethnicity, us whities at least have the excuse we were here first and everyone else are incomers, so really it should just have two categories, Native born white and Immigrants and people descended from them. Unlike in the US, which is rammed with Christian fundamentalists, I don't think religion matters too much in the UK, with two exceptions, Muslims who have now been irredeemably associated in the public mind with terrorism and Catholics, who are still, AFAIK, still discriminated against in law.
B "Catholics, who are still, AFAIK, still discriminated against in law"
??? No they are not. Catholic schools get same funding as CofE schools. Catholic church gets same tax breaks as CoE church. Many Catholics are Irish citizens and still have the right to vote here, even with an Irish passport. (I suppose this is a hangover from when RoI became independent and UK govt view it as a rebel province whose citizens were actually British, so fair enough but that was nearly a century ago and we can stop now.)
There is some arcane bullshit about Royal Family can't marry a left footer, but who cares about them?
"There is some arcane bullshit about Royal Family can't marry a left footer, but who cares about them?"
That was the law I was thinking of. It's still discrimination, however arcane.
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