Race Commission Out in UK

Those of you who believe that in the modern world we should judge people by the content of their character will no doubt be glad to hear that the British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is going out of business.

Unfortunately it is only going out of business because “its duties are acquired by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights next month,” as Rod Liddle reports in the London Spectator.

The new organisation, headed by Trevor Phillips, will co-ordinate all manner of whining on behalf of absolutely anybody who considers him- or herself to be oppressed and victimised and discriminated against by the vindictive white male hegemony.

So that’s all right.

Being a good bureaucratic institution and all, the CRE issued a valedictory report. And things are not good.

An ethnic minority baby born today is sadly still more likely to go on to receive poor quality education, be paid less, live in sub-standard housing, be in poorer health and be discriminated against in other ways than his or her white contemporary.

Oh yeah, writes Liddle, then how you you CRE chaps explain this?

A Chinese baby born today [in Britain], for example, would be much, much more likely to grow up to be better paid than his or her white contemporary.

Then there is the

‘East Asian’ community, whose performance outstrips not only the indigenous whites, but even their Chinese cousins.

Let’s look at some more info, shall we?

• A child born to an Indian family today can expect, on average, almost precisely the same educational achievements, housing, employment and good or bad health as his or her white counterparts.
• Meanwhile, Pakistani kids do slightly worse, on average, than their white counterparts but are more likely to end up self-employed and less likely to be found doing menial work.
• Black African girls are likely to do rather better out of the education system than white British boys.
• A child born to any one of the following ethnic minority groups is far more likely than a white British child to get a job in the top managerial and professional class: Indian, Chinese, East Asian, Irish [Irish? -ed.].
• A boy born to a white British working-class family will do worse at school than every ethnic minority other than those from the Caribbean, Bangladeshi and travelling communities.

All this puts a bit of a kybosh into the basic assumption of commissions like the CRE that “ethnic minorities” form a sort of undifferentiated mass of helpless oppressed people.  No they don’t.

If, for example, black African girls do rather well at school, better than white boys, and British Caribbean boys do less well, it suggests that either teachers or the education system are very discriminating about their discrimination, to a quite unbelievable degree, or that something else must be at work here.

It couldn’t be, could it, that different “ethnic minorities,” not to mention the evil white majority, have different cultural traditions and attitudes towards things like education and marriage and life achievement?