What is the opposite of equality? It is inequality, surely. And what does inequality look like? Well that’s any time in which an outcome varied solely due to the nature of a person’s inherited characteristics.
So if two people have precisely the same qualifications and fitness for a role, but one of them has a racial or sexual difference and is either advanced or held back because of it, you could legitimately say that the subjects had been treated unequally.
Even in a country as tolerant and open as Britain, it is undeniable that historically people have been disadvantaged because of their sex, sexuality or skin colour. Roles for which they have been eminently fit and suited have been closed to them because of a characteristic over which they have no say. Not all the bad blood from this has gone away.
Of course the way to dissipate any remaining bad blood would be to visibly and consistently strive to appoint people to positions based on their merit, confident that in the course of time people of ability will rise to the positions which they deserve. But what would be the most divisive way in which to go about trying to address such inequalities? Well, that would be to very visibly and obviously create and institute a mirror version of the old system: to attempt to carve out special privileges for people who look like those who suffered discrimination in the past, and to treat with a special disdain and contempt the people who look like they might have once benefited from discrimination.
There have been a number of fine examples of this emerging catastrophe in recent days. There has, for instance, been the exceptionally light-touch policing which allowed early Black Lives Matter protests to descend into violence and disorder in London. And the very heavy-handed policing (justified, as it happens, but which could have been used at the previous protests) when groups of predominantly white and often violent protestors turned up to ‘defend’ statues which were under attack from some BLM protestors.
Then there was the sacking of the 24-year old who arranged the “White Lives Matter Burnley” stunt, after a month of hearing politicians, media, corporations and street protestors repeatedly citing the slogan of BLM.
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