INCLUSIVISTY, LIKE FUNERALS, IS ALL ABOUT WHO IS NOT THERE

by Colin Liddell

In one of his videos from earlier this year, Simon Webb applies his mathematical skills to the problem of the overrepresentation of Blacks on British TV and the BBC in particular.

He reports that the BBC website had an article (with a video) about young entrepreneurs. The picture, of course, featured four faces, all Black. According to Webb, this was yet another example of the BBC giving this group, which makes up only around 3% of the UK population, its full spotlight.

He then calculated the odds of four individuals from such a small minority all appearing in a photo at random to be over a million to one (33 X 33 X 33 X 33), proving conclusively that the BBC was pushing the Black kids to the front with an unholy zealotry. 

Webb furthermore pointed out that South Asians, who make up a larger percentage of the UK population, are typically underrepresented in things like this. 

Of course the paranoids in the Alt-Right (possibly under the influence of their Russian handlers seeking to polarise the West) will tell you this is all part of a plot by Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and Ghost of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi to prepare the way for the extinction of the White race.

Naturally a sensible person like Webb has no time for such nonsense, which may be why he still has a flourishing YouTube channel. But, after pushing our "race buttons" in this quite a legitimate way, he sadly leaves the question hanging there without any explanation for why such a clearly non-random act is happening. To their credit, the conspiracy theorists in the Alt-Right at least attempt explanations, even if these are almost always pathetically mad.

In my view, this sort of thing does not need to be such a mystery. This "young entrepreneur" puff piece is clearly an attempt at what is known as "inclusion," amplified by the desire to provide "positive models" for a group that manifestly lacks them.

According to the BBC Charter, the organisation has a target of making 15% of all on-screen portrayals Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME). The breakdown of the BAME component, which is disproportionately dominated by Afro-Caribbeans, clearly needs looking at. No doubt in the future this will become a major issue. But, leaving that aside, let's look at this core BBC policy.

The BBC's Content Diversity and Inclusion Commissioning Guidelines phrase it as follows:

We are committed to meeting ambitious new portrayal targets that cover a wider range of diversity than ever before – with positive impact for audiences and greater opportunity for diverse talent. We need your help to ensure that the UK’s diverse communities and groups are authentically represented on screen and that we deliver a rich and thought-provoking mix of portrayal.

Yes, it may seem that "diversity" is just a codeword for "less White people," but what the BBC is trying to do in the case of the "young entrepreneurs" is (a) present "positive role models" and (b) avoid anything that looks like "tokenism."

Quite simply, Blacks lag behind in entrepreneurship. (Nobody, of course, knows the reason for this, although sunspots may be suspected.) But the result is the BBC thinks that it has to then "overrepresent" the "underepresented."

Of course, this could easily be done by having just one Black, among the four, as this would still be overrepresentation by a factor of eight. But the problem with that is it would look like "tokenism," a dirty word for the BBC and broadcasting regulators, like the Office of Communications (Ofcom). A recent Ofcom report "Representation and portrayal on BBC TV 2018" notes the "horrors" of tokenism:

Audiences are wary of ‘box-ticking’ and react against it Some people we spoke to were sensitive to what they called ’box-ticking’ or ’tokenism’, where they felt people with particular characteristics had been included primarily to make a programme appear more diverse, rather than to improve quality.

“Question Time is normally a bunch of Caucasian people on there with maybe a token person on there to argue the case. The One Show the same thing; the news – it’s all the same” (Female 18-34 Black African, London)

So, yes, having just one young "Black entrepreneur" is not going to cut it. The code word, as we see in the BBC's Content Diversity and Inclusion Commissioning Guidelines is "authentic", which is the opposite of "tokenism," and presents people as they are naturally are, i.e. preferring to associate with their own kind. That means putting four Blacks where one would previously have done. If it hasn't already happened, an "authentic" all-Black episode of Question Time is clearly on the cards.

The real problem here, however, is that culture, news, and media attention is not and never has been a level playing field. People are focused on and included based on worth, talent, and newsworthiness. It is a natural, organic hierarchy and one that favours the core population that generates the culture, namely "bad old White people."

This inbuilt organic media bias also tends to favour men over women, the fit over the disabled, and people of certain optimum ages, rather than the very young and very old. Also smart and charismatic people.

In order to counter all this natural, organic bias, a major effort of social and cultural engineering is required, one that the BBC and the British establishment, in their Neoliberal egalitarian zeal, have signed up for.

Inclusion, at the end of the day, is really about who is not there and then pretending that they are. A bit like funerals.

Possibly the BBC's efforts might encourage a few young Black kids, who otherwise wouldn't have done so, to become entrepreneurs, or at least try. Or maybe they'll just see it as patronising and feel even more resentment. Really, we'll never know.

The cost, however, is for more White people to think that the system hates them and that the Alt-Right may be telling them the truth about a coordinated scheme of "racial replacement," with a rise in anti-Semitism thrown into the bargain. Multicultural societies have an inbuilt tendency, it seems, to operate as zero-sum games.

Connected content:
Racist BBC Forces Blacks into White Roles

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).