The Diversity Delusion
The mad Mandarins at the BBC are yet again proving their 'woke' credentials by proposing to spend one hundred million pounds of licence fee payers' money on promoting 'diversity' within the organisation. There are many problems with this endeavour, not the least of which is the political make-up of the BBC itself. There is clearly very little diversity within the BBC in the most important areas of opinion and political philosophy.
Those tasked with examining and
increasing diversity across all sectors of the BBC and media in general,
are all tainted with a similar set of views and beliefs about culture and
the nature of society, and are the least likely people to ensure that the BBC
represents and reports upon the views of the vast majority of the British
public, who for the most part, are sick to death of the BBC's bias, partisan
reporting, virtue-signalling and politically correct agenda.
We can already see in the BBC's output
in news, current affairs and drama the unfortunate results of their obsession
with diversity and identity politics. In their determination to be inclusive,
there is now scarcely a drama or news report which does not include reference
to the so called LGBTQ or BAME communities. Many dramas are now peopled with
actors portraying every ethnic, sexual and cultural orientation known.
This neither enhances the story, nor adds to the drama's authenticity. In fact
it does quite the opposite, rendering many programmes completely unwatchable
due to their political, sexual and cultural bias.
However, the real problem comes with
the idea of 'diversity' itself. There is nothing 'good' in and of itself in the
concept of diversity. Firstly, 'diversity' has to be very
unambiguously defined, and then secondly, it has to be unequivocally demonstrated
that its achievement will bring tangible and incontrovertible benefits to
all. I submit that to date, no such case has been made for 'diversity'
being a desirable outcome and that, the value and benefits of diversity, both
in concept and reality remains unproven.
The other major problem is who decides
how many different characteristics have to be accommodated in this drive
for inclusivity. Is the aim to ensure fair representation for some minority
groups, or all minority groups? How many categories must be equalised across to
achieve 'diversity?'
One could perhaps begin with ethnicity.
How many ethnicities? Just those which make up the mix in a particular society,
or wider maybe, to take account of the divergence across the entire world? What
about gender? How many of those are there currently? Must all those who
identify as non-binary be given equal opportunity with all other
self-identified genders?
Then next perhaps, one could examine
sexual orientation. Again, how many sexual orientations are there, two, four,
six, eight, ten, or an almost infinite number? Let's not forget religious
conviction, must we ensure that the views of all religious groups are fairly
represented? Will air time and acting opportunities be offered equally to
Christians, of all denominations, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs Mormons etc,
etc? All this and we've not even begun to tackle other differences
which need to be considered. Like age, for example, then there's disability,
and height and weight and eye-colour and hair-colour and baldness and
educational attainment and disadvantage and class and so on and so on ad
infinitum.
What happens if an organisation
discovers that all its plumbers are straight white males? Does it then need to
advertise for a disabled Trans black female plumber? Such an advert would
probably offend a Chinese dwarf who'd just completed his
apprenticeship as a domestic heating engineer. Or, if a scene in a drama
calls for the appearance of a cyclist, it calls for the appearance of a
cyclist. It doesn't call for a disabled, black lesbian on a bike. Even less
should it provide an opportunity to highlight the difficulties of the disabled
BAME community to cycle in safety. The whole diversity agenda is
fraught with such ridiculous and conflicting difficulties.
The case for 'diversity' has neither
been effectively made, nor have the consequences of 'diversity' been properly
thought through. Politicians, journalists, and other public figures speak about
'diversity' as though there were no question as to its desirability, as
though there exists a universal public consensus that 'diversity' is
unquestionably a 'good thing.' This assumption needs to be robustly challenged
as there is no substantial evidence to support the claim that 'diversity' is
either desirable, or achievable.
At present, 'diversity' remains a
delusion obsessing the thoughts of the woke metropolitan elite and inflicting
upon the unconvinced general public, the unfortunate consequences of their
diversity driven insanity.
