Pride and Prejudice

You can take some people out of their environment, you can treat them like a lord (literally), but you can't take the background out of their upbringing. Take for example the Labour Party peer, Lord Ahmed who reportedly made racist and corruption claims in Pakistan against the UK Courts and the Labour Party that made him .... they were in relation to his arrest, conviction and jailing  for driving offences.

Lord Ahmed has Jewish friends who own Newspapers and TV Channels

The Times newspaper reported that he had said that "My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My 'Jewish friends' who own newspapers and TV channels, opposed this" .... and added that the judge who had sentenced him had been appointed to the High Court after helping a "Jewish colleague" of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair during "an important case". In case anyone has forgotten Ed Milliband the current Labour Party Leader is Jewish.

The Conservatives have has similar problems with ethnic minorities that they have also appointed to the House of Lords e.g. Lord Taylor of Warwick who spent three months in 2011 in HMP Wandsworth and Standford Hill for expenses fraud, while Baroness Warsi has often been seen as gaffe prone, including going on a ministerial trip to Pakistan with her business partner. Also having said that "electoral fraud" predominantly within the 'Asian community' had "cost the Conservatives three seats at the general election" ... and that "Muslims that go to parliament don't have any morals or principles" ... she later qualified that latter statement as being taken out of context.

Then in the middle of the Liberal Govt Minister Chris Huhne, and his ex wife Vicky Pryce scandal, there was the story of the Black female judge, Constance Briscoe, 55, who was arrested for 'lying to police' to support Ms Pryce's story .... The jury at Southwark Crown Court heard that Miss Briscoe was being dropped as a witness, because doubt had been cast on her ability to act as a ‘witness of truth’. Mr Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, said Pryce and Miss Briscoe ‘cooked up a plan’ to leak the speeding points story to the Press in 2010, in revenge after Huhne left Pryce for his PR adviser Carina Trimingham.

All this raises questions about whether some people are being promoted to high office and honour, or being held back from the same, simply because of colour quotas being operated by political parties of all persuasions, desperate to court the ethnic vote. When a black judge is not considered a reliable court witness, when a black barrister and politician is sent to prison over expenses abuses, and an asian politician accuses Judges of helping the Jewish friends of an ex-PM and then convicting him of a motoring crime for 'supporting Muslims' ..... you have to wonder if they were not really ready for the roles that they were being given?

Is it because we artificially push some people from ethnic minorities up the career tree out of misguided PC considerations, instead of ability and aptitude, only for those so promoted, to then spectacularly to blow up? After all it could be argued that they are not rising purely on ability, but rather on that and other factors ..... that they are praised and lauded for a level of performance that would not be noteworthy in the white society, but is unusual in their own communities?

In the US, in 2006 this issue came to a head with a court case in 2009 when the supreme court heard a case known as Ricci v. DeStefano which was a class action arising from a lawsuit brought against the City of New Haven, Connecticut by twenty city firefighters alleging that the city discriminated against them with regard to promotions. The firefighters, nineteen of whom are White and two of whom are Hispanic, had all passed the test for promotions to management.

City of New Haven officials invalidated all the test results because none of the black firefighters who passed the exam had scored high enough to be considered for the positions. They stated that they feared a lawsuit over the test's adverse impact on a protected minority. The complainants claimed they were denied the promotions because of their race, in affect a form of racial discrimination

The firefighters won a majority decision and the City of New Haven reinstated the examination results and promoted 14 of the 20 firefighters within months of the decision. The city settled the lawsuit by paying $2 million to the firefighter plaintiffs; enhancing their pension benefits by millions of dollars; and paying their attorney, $3 million in fees and costs.

In Jacksonville Florida (reported in "FirstCoastNews.Com on or before 3/8/06) that Firefighters Win Reverse Discrimination Lawsuit

"A race discrimination lawsuit pitting several Jacksonville firefighters against the city has come to an end in federal court last Friday. The jury sided with the firefighters. Four lieutenants claimed their promotion to Captain was blocked by then Fire Chief Ray Alfred. The firemen claimed race was a factor. The firefighters are white, the fire chief, black.

As part of the verdict, the lieutenants will receive back pay as if they had been promoted to Captain. The amount to be divided among them is in excess of $220,000 before legal fees"

In effect are we suffering from the effects of having PC driven quotas and tokenism?