CALVIN ROBINSON: As diversity lessons for the civil service are scrapped, it’s good riddance to the bunkum of ‘unconscious race-bias’ classes
Calvin Robinson: Despite huge demographic changes in recent decades, our political system has not been scarred by extremism, nor has our society been gripped by racial discord
Britain is a remarkably tolerant country with an impressive record on integration.
Despite huge demographic changes in recent decades, our political system has not been scarred by extremism, nor has our society been gripped by racial discord.
Our national spirit of openness is precisely why so many migrants wish to settle here.
It is therefore a bitter paradox that this success story is being undermined by a small minority who pose as the champions of anti-racism but who only promote friction as they seek to paint Britain as a land wracked by bigotry.
The great American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King urged that, in the fight for equality, people should ‘not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.
Twisted
But today’s self-styled ‘anti-racists’ have turned that ideal on its head, holding that we should all be defined by our ethnicity. In their twisted narrative, colour blindness is not a virtue but a vice.
This divisive outlook is reflected in the fashion for ‘unconscious bias training’, now common in British workplaces, especially in the public sector.
Such training — which can range from lectures to online tests — aims to root out any hidden prejudices that may inadvertently influence staff behaviour or decisions.
That may sound like politically correct nonsense. But, in recent years, even our political class has succumbed to it.
Since 2014, when completing four ‘modules’ in diversity and inclusion training became a requirement for all Whitehall staff, 170,000 civil servants have undergone it.
And in the summer, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, Sir Keir Starmer decided all Labour Party employees should undergo such instruction.
But now a welcome stand has been made by the Government against this fad.
Yesterday, the Cabinet Office announced that ‘unconscious- bias training’ will be scrapped for the civil service, after an internal review found the courses did nothing for equality and, in some cases, were even counter-productive as they fuelled resentment.
In the present institutionalised fervour about race, the decision is a bold one.
But it is absolutely correct. For the review is only the latest in a string of reports that confirm that bias training is, put simply, a load of bunkum.
In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found the evidence for the ‘ability [of unconscious bias training] to change behaviour is limited’.
A year later, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development declared that the courses in bias ‘had no sustained impact on behaviour’.
This is hardly surprising given that the whole method is profoundly flawed and riddled with contradictions.
It supposedly celebrates diversity, but demands rigid conformity with its dogma. Its ostensible purpose is to build harmony, but its bullying, hectoring tone causes hostility and defensiveness.
Stereotypes are denounced under the doctrine, yet sweeping generalisations are made about white people. It preaches responsibility for personal actions, yet infantilises and patronises users.
This was highlighted by a recent such course in Parliament, where MPs were lectured by a diversity consultant using a glove puppet.
More importantly, it has no intellectual basis of any substance.
Calvin Robinson: The great American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King urged that, in the fight for equality, people should ‘not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’
First developed in the 1990s from the Implicit Association Test, a tool for ‘psychological diagnosis’ developed by American social psychologists, it is a hopelessly unreliable pseudo-science, like astrology or phrenology (the belief that character can be assessed from the shape of the head).
That lack of credibility stems from the fact that its primary purpose is not scientific at all, but political: namely, to be used by cultural warriors to ensure that everyone conforms to their world view.
Queen Elizabeth I famously declared that she had ‘no desire to make windows into men’s souls’. For her, as long as her subjects obeyed the law, she did not care what they thought privately.
That has been the British tradition for centuries.
But bias trainers have a very different approach.
Like the Thought Police of George Orwell’s novel 1984, they want to control minds by delving into the unconscious, where they would like to eradicate unpalatable ideas and impose compliance.
And as with any attempt to change people’s thinking, the premise behind unconscious-bias training only operates in one direction, where white people are the eternal oppressors and ethnic minorities the permanent victims.
It is inconceivable that on any course a black or Asian client would be berated by a trainer for showing prejudice against a white colleague.
This one-sided attitude also gives rise to the racially charged concept of ‘white privilege’, which is not only nasty but absurd.
A white supermarket shelf stacker has far less wealth and power than a successful black barrister or an Asian medical consultant.
Guilt
But the bias trainers set a trap for anyone who dares to challenge them.
They refer to ‘white fragility’ to describe any negative reaction to any accusations of racial prejudice.
Surprise, surprise — their white clients can never win.
If they submit, they are admitting to their guilt as unconscious racists. If they refuse, they are attacked for being in denial, too ‘fragile’ to handle the truth.
Either way, the bias trainers — who charge a minimum of £300-an-hour for the opportunity to hector their customers — end up laughing all the way to the bank.
One consultancy I came across yesterday charges a £1,750 fee for a day’s course in ‘unconscious bias and cross-cultural training’. But this mix of indoctrination and cash-grabbing has to end.
Pictured: Femi Otitoju with ‘UB’ puppet, that is said to be used in the ‘unconscious bias’ training given to MPs in a course designed by Challenge Consultancy
That is why the Government’s decision yesterday was so welcome and could mark a turning point in the fight back against the spread of the pernicious woke agenda.
The Tories have been in power for ten successive years and, after the last election triumph, enjoy an 80-seat majority in the Commons.
Yet they have been astonishingly timid about defending liberalism and British values against the race-obsessed minority who have held sway for far too long.
While, of course, there remain inequalities that need addressing, this cause has come to predominate in civic life.
Museums are browbeaten into removing statues, schools into ‘decolonising’ their lessons.
The National Trust, which has entirely succumbed to the PC onslaught, recently drew up a list of shame, featuring historic properties that have links to British imperialism or the slave trade.
Laughable
Some of the grievances would be laughable were they not so offensive.
Only last month, the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes was denounced because one of his distant ancestors had a connection to slavery.
Meanwhile, without any sense of irony at all, Prince Harry, a self-appointed high priest of the diversity cult, has the nerve to lecture us about white privilege.
Even the much-cherished British pastime of horticulture is in the dock, with BBC Countryfile presenter James Wong declaring last week that ‘UK gardening culture has racism baked into its DNA’.
Welcome to the mad world of contemporary ‘anti-racism’, where even pruning the roses may be a thought crime.
The Government’s decision is a much-needed blow for sanity against such lunacy.
Britain is a great country with so much that people of all races can celebrate.
We cannot allow its appeal to be destroyed by fanatics bent on whipping up racial disunity for their own self-serving ends.
Calvin Robinson is a former teacher and now governor at a London state school.
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