Using Sexism & Racism to ‘Improve Diversity’

While it may once have been scandalous for employers to exclude white men from their recruitment process, fast forward to 2023 and most hiring panels appear to have decided it’s riskier to include them. Infuriated by the failure of equality to produce equal outcomes, our liberal culture demands a bogeyman, and in the straight, white male, it found the pantomime villain of its dreams. Whatever your grievance, the patriarchy will shoulder the blame because any alternative culprit is simply too ‘offensive’ to countenance—no matter how well the facts support their claim. 

Consider ‘misogyny’ for instance. I use inverted commas, because I’m not referring to genuinely abhorrent acts directed towards women (wife-beating, FGM, rape). I mean the range of behaviour that charlatan politicians feel comfortable speaking out about: juvenile banter. Irrespective of their political hue, awareness campaigns in Britain are now guaranteed to feature a white, working-class thug harassing women; a neanderthal, thankfully chastised and kept in check by a range of more enlightened non-white males. It ought to raise suspicion that everyone from Sadiq Khan to the Home Office is singing from the same hymn sheet on this. In fact, if Netflix ever releases a documentary on the grooming gang scandal across the northern towns of England, the likelihood of the perpetrators being played by white actors is a pretty safe bet. 

The premise used to inculcate and justify the war on white men is the lie of white privilege, currently being pushed in schools under the umbrella of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This lie asserts that white men are both uniquely privileged, and uniquely evil. Neither, of course, are true. In terms of privilege, Chinese and Indian workers out-earn their white British counterparts by almost £10,000 a year, while in terms of academic performance, working-class white males are the poorest performing demographic (it must be all that misogyny slowing them down). Meanwhile, even the most cursory analysis of crime in Britain demonstrates that, if anything, white men are underrepresented in criminal activity, unless one insists on pretending not to understand ‘per capita.’ 

However, we live in times where facts increasingly do not matter, and the lie is succeeding. CRT teaching is endemic in British schools, with between 59% and 73% of pupils encountering the terminology (depending on which nonsense terms you consider). In America from whence CRT was imported, a staggering 79% of 18-24 year olds support the ideology that “White people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favoured today at universities and for employment.”  

The result of such ‘antiracism’ is nothing but racism repackaged: white men are now routinely subject to baseless critique, racial profiling, and exclusion, conducted unchallenged as though it were a virtue. This cancer infects all strata of society. The accusations that English schools, football teams, and even the Royal Family are “too white” are taken seriously. All the while, this new racism is constraining the recruitment policy of every institution from the police and the military to the government. One could perhaps afford sympathy to those forced to comply with this nonsense within the public sector, but surely private companies are free to tread the old-fashioned route to success: merit? Hold on to your hats, boys, you ain’t seen nothing yet. 

Cue first-female Aviva insurance company CEO, Amanda Blanc, whose ‘solution’ to the white male domination of companies at board level is about as original as kneeling for George Floyd. Blanc made the news last week when she confidently declared that senior white male recruits would not be hired without first being given the nod by her personally, in a bid to “stamp out sexism in finance.” Addressing the Treasury select committee’s ‘Sexism in the City’ inquiry, Blanc told MPs of the range of ‘shocking’ sexism she had been exposed to throughout her career:

• An investor complaint during last year’s AGM that Blanc wasn’t “the right man for the job.”
• At a shareholder meeting last year, an investor claimed Aviva’s female directors are “so good at basic housekeeping activities, I’m sure this will be reflected in the direction of the board in future.” 
• Misogyny during her time as chairman of Welsh Rugby Union, where she once overheard a council member comment “Women should know their place in the kitchen and stick to ironing; men are the master race.” 

Case closed then. 

The most revealing comments Blanc made at the hearing were the following: “The perpetrators of predatory behaviour need to leave the business,” and “The scope of the charter is to get more women senior management roles. My belief is if you have more women in senior management roles, this behaviour will go away.”

There’s a great deal to unpack here. If Blanc sincerely believes that white men are uniquely guilty with respect to predatory behaviour (implicit in her remarks), then I’d love to know what her evidence is. If, however, as I suspect, Blanc is merely addressing her ire towards men in general, of which white men clearly constitute the largest corporate demographic (which is the most generous interpretation one could give), then she is still well wide of the mark. 

To be fair to Blanc, the evidence for female sexual predation is still not widespread in the public consciousness, partly because the research is relatively recent, and partly because it was always assumed that women were far less likely to be abusers than men. For once however, the data might genuinely prove ‘shocking’:

• Men and women are equally likely to experience non consensual sex, and most male victims cite female perpetrators.
• 35% of male victims of rape or sexual assault report at least one female perpetrator. Of those, 58% of male and 41% of female victims report that the incident involved a violent attack. 
• In prison, the biggest threat to female inmates comes from fellow inmates not male staff, at a ratio of 3:1.
• Female inmates are more likely to be abused by their fellows than are male inmates, and in juvenile correctional facilities, nine out of ten reports of sexual abuse name a female perpetrator. 

Assuming Blanc holds the best of intentions and is unaware of the true nature of abuse between the sexes, her approach to recruitment is still highly problematic. Even if she were correct in her assessment of white males as the most dangerous addition to a company’s executive board, in what other arena would such stereotyping be tolerated? Do London supermarkets routinely deny the sale of kitchen knives to budding Jamie Olivers, on the grounds that they are black? Do Rotherham police officers round up Pakistani Muslims waiting at the school gates, in case they have grooming not greeting on the agenda?

There is another issue at stake here: Aviva’s policy is utterly unlawful. Lewis Silkin employment lawyer, James Davies, suggests that Aviva’s position “sails pretty close to the wind of lawful practice, as white men are protected from being subjected to any detriment on the grounds of their gender or ethnicity under equality laws”  However, the truth is much simpler: the Equality Act makes it crystal clear that sex and race are protected characteristics. The usual loophole employed here is one of positive action, whereby a candidate of equal ability is hired in lieu of a white applicant “to help a disadvantaged or underrepresented group.” It is quite obvious to understand how such an opt-out would be open to abuse. 

Until such time as the law addresses this flaw however, what exactly should white men do? Withdraw our labour en masse to prove the point that we are not uniquely villainous? Would we be welcomed back with open arms once the females and non-whites prove themselves equally reprehensible in positions of authority? Clearly an unlikely scenario, but some form of pushback is required. While we cannot entirely boycott the state in all its woke madness, at least we can give private companies the cold shoulder this Christmas, which is precisely what all white male Aviva customers should now be doing. Hit them where it hurts: in the share price, which seems to be the ‘protected characteristic’ most loved by woke companies. Let’s see how wedded Aviva really are to “stamping out sexism in finance,” and more importantly, how wedded they are to Amanda Blanc.