Diversity and Scientific Correctness

 

Yssmin Alibhai-Brown wrote a thoughtful piece on why there are very few black faces at the BBC. I think that the problems are not just at the BBC.

I don't believe in political correctness, but I do believe in the scientific variety.

I do not know the media except as a consumer, but I do know the computer industry.

Go back to the early seventies when I started and there were more non-white faces then than there are now. There were also a lot more women too. Nearly forty years ago, they needed any willing hands that were available and it was easy for anybody to break through the tissue paper ceiling. You just needed to show willing and be prepared to work hard and also to learn. The only people you discriminated against were smokers. (That was because the size of a smoke particle was the distance between a disc head and the disc, so if smoke got in, it ruined the disc and you lost the data. Very scientifically correct.)

Now it is all about standards, testing and rules. And who writes those rules?

Most of the computer industry I deal with now are consultants. All are white and male.

I only program for myself now and don't employ any computer programmers, software testers or salesmen, but if I did, I would still look for those who believed in breaking down walls rather than creating them.

Now, my wife and I own a thoroughbred stud at Newmarket. Talk to anybody in racing and they will tell you that they want more owners for the health of the sport. But you also hear people say, how do we get non-white people to come into the sport, as owners, spectators, jockeys and administrators? Nobody really seems to know, despite the fact that several high profile British owners aren't white.

We all know that racial inclusion and thorough mixing is the best for success in this country, but it just seems that no-one knows how to achieve it without raising the ire of various pressure groups. Perhaps it explains why women and racial minorities pack various professions.