Making assumptions about people, who they are and what they do, can be a problematic business. Those who come from old money can be famously careless about how they dress because they don't need to impress. So if you have half an eye on a news channel and there's an interviewee in a crumpled jacket and a shirt that could do with a good iron, it's probably unwise to assume it's report about the homeless; it may well be a feature on country houses.
This tendency may explain why the Daily Mail's diarist, Ephraim Hardcastle, was a little confused last week by an item on Newsnight. He clearly thought the presence of two guests, one Asian, one black and both female, must mean the viewers were being given a hard time about racism again. When it became clear that they were there to discuss the origins of the universe, the confusion deepened. As Ephraim reminded us, it's white men who do all this serious science stuff, not females from ethnic minorities. The two experts were admirably well qualified, as the Mail subsequently admitted – Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is an honorary research associate in the UCL's department of physics and astronomy, and Dr Hiranya Peiris is a reader in astronomy in the same institution – so why were their expertise and skills being questioned?
This syndrome of calling into question the credentials, academic and otherwise, of professionals from minority groups is pervasive and goes back over the generations. In the 1950s Caribbean migrants soon discovered that employers were unimpressed with their teaching, nursing and other qualifications, even though in those days the islands were British colonies. Many professionals ended up driving buses. Full story...
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This tendency may explain why the Daily Mail's diarist, Ephraim Hardcastle, was a little confused last week by an item on Newsnight. He clearly thought the presence of two guests, one Asian, one black and both female, must mean the viewers were being given a hard time about racism again. When it became clear that they were there to discuss the origins of the universe, the confusion deepened. As Ephraim reminded us, it's white men who do all this serious science stuff, not females from ethnic minorities. The two experts were admirably well qualified, as the Mail subsequently admitted – Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is an honorary research associate in the UCL's department of physics and astronomy, and Dr Hiranya Peiris is a reader in astronomy in the same institution – so why were their expertise and skills being questioned?
This syndrome of calling into question the credentials, academic and otherwise, of professionals from minority groups is pervasive and goes back over the generations. In the 1950s Caribbean migrants soon discovered that employers were unimpressed with their teaching, nursing and other qualifications, even though in those days the islands were British colonies. Many professionals ended up driving buses. Full story...
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