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FFS stop it, everybody knows black people are getting discriminated all over the world..no "evidence" needed..where has Glasgo gone, back to the 80's?
 
Carl Ikeme will retain the Number 1 shirt for the coming season.
 
Yeah, cracking (but obvious) choice by the club.

I doubt Ruddy would have wanted to come in and automatically get passed the No.1 shirt anyway, given the circumstances.
 
Siggy said:
Does that evidence include the likes of Paul Ince falsely using the race card? If there really is evidence (I would love to see it) that people are being denied an interview or a job based on their skin colour, then those that make those decisions should be sacked.

I just find it unbelievable that a candidate with the correct qualifications and calibre (Chris Hughton for example) wouldn't get a job due to skin colour.

Sorry to use the Paul Ince example again it feels the most relevant.


Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Here's the thing to always keep in mind here: racism is never just one moment. Racism is structural. It's the sum effect of many, many individual moments and decisions, many of which are often unintentional. By focusing on individual acts of discrimination, it confuses and distracts from more important and profound change that is necessary. To quote Avenue Q, *everyone's* a little bit racist, at least some of the time. The best thing to do isn't to bristle at being called a racist, it's for us to self-critique and consider our own role in the structures around us.

This is a real problem with the way anti-racism has been taught and explained for the last few decades, really - by treating racism as just individual acts, it makes it seem like, as long as people aren't openly calling black people the n-word, then "racism" isn't a problem any more - or that racism in football will be "solved" once we go a whole season without anyone making a monkey gesture, that sort of thing. It's deeper than that.

So, in football, there's a lot of stuff that's happening unseen and over a long period of time before we get to the point that Paul Ince isn't hired for a job he isn't qualified for:

First off, you've got the class and race structure of English football's governing bodies, which, as discussed, means that a lot of the people making the most important decisions are older, whiter, and wealthier. Older people tend to stick with what they know as "right", slowing down the change that younger generations want. They're also of a social group which tends to clump together and hire its own (what you might call the "golf club" mentality). It's no coincidence that the whitest, wealthiest sports - polo, golf, sailing, etc. - also tend to be the most exclusionary to women and minorities, either explicitly (like not allowing women to be members of clubs) or implicitly (in that, while there's no rule on not joining, why would you when the culture of the club is so insular and unwelcoming to outsiders).

So already, before we even talk about race, we have a group of people who tend to make decisions for their own in-group. I bet you anything that every single person in a position of serious power in the FA considers racism a terrible thing; yet they might not be cognisant of their tendency to a) be friends with people just like them, and b) hire people who are, or who are just like, their friends. These aren't consciously discriminatory decisions - nobody's running interviews thinking "christ, I hope that no wogs turn up" - but they are *practically* discriminatory in their outcome.

This also goes to, as we've discussed, the idea of the "old boy's network" that governs British football, and which prioritises ex-players. These types of networks are common in many industries in the UK - it's part of the DNA of this nation, which still has respect and deference in many parts of public life to hereditary wealth and status. BAME people are less wealthy, and less connected (the two things are mutually-supportive) than white people, in general.

All of this adds up to hiring processes within football which prioritise the groups already in power, which, in this case, doesn't include BAME people, ex-player or no. That's why you have lots of black players - and plenty of BAME stewards, cleaners, admin staff, whatever - but they don't break through to the coaching and managerial positions of real power. There's a huge difference between hiring someone below you, and then allowing that person to become a peer. All of this also discourages BAME people from even trying to access these networks and positions.

You also have more psychological issues, wherein - as I mentioned - we're all basically racist anyway. Studies have found that white recruiters implicitly discard CVs from people with "ethnic-sounding" names, or that black people are perceived as stronger and more intimidating than white people. The effects of these biases is hard to quantify exactly, but it can be seen manifesting in different parts of public life - and they are *extremely* deep-rooted. Some stereotypes go back centuries, as does economic inequality. Those things can't be overcome within a single generation, let alone one FA-approved five-year plan.

In football, just think how we tend to talk about big, black players, versus equally big white players. It's not as bad as it used to be in the 80s and 90s, of course, but there are undoubtedly perception issues at play, just as in other walks of life, where BAME people often talk about how they have to work much harder than white people to be perceived as similarly competent. Any black person wanting to become a coach is going to struggling against all these biases in beginning a coaching career. Will they be graded more harshly than their white classmates when studying for a badge? Studies have found that that does happen, teachers often unknowingly mark BAME students harsher in schools and colleges, for example.

So: you're a black man or woman wanting to become a coach, or manager, in British football. You've got to overcome the same filters as the white men and women - you've got to be an ex-player with good contacts to even start on the path, a lot of the time. But you've then got extra barriers at every stage. You might not have the money to afford to study, to dedicate yourself to years of trying for a specific role in coaching. You might not have the contacts to get a foot in the door. You've got to deal with recruiters who are going to be coming to you with inbuilt biases around your abilities - maybe you were a creative, technical full-back as a player, but all anyone saw was your pace and your height, so they don't see your experience in the game as the right fit for the role you're applying for. You're not "inventive" enough, maybe, not "clever" enough. And even when you do get in, you've got to deal with the unwelcoming environment, the old boy's network, the fact that promotions come from knowing the right people rather than being the best at your job.

The question here, in the end, isn't "does Chris Hughton get a fair chance when he's interviewed for a job?" It's actually "why, when there's a managerial vacancy, is the BAME shortlist only as long as Chris Hughton?"

This is where Paul Ince comes back into it. The filter that blocks black managers isn't total - obviously - but where it does let people through, it's not doing so anything like fairly. Essentially, Ince was a good player with lots of contacts in the game because of the status he attained as a player, and that made it easier for him to jump the hurdles that stop most of his peers - he's a token, essentially.

Except, of course, he isn't any good at being a manager. That's the danger of tokenism, of thinking "well, we've got one already, so of course the problem isn't there any more". If there truly wasn't any discrimination, we wouldn't still be talking about Paul Ince because we should have a whole new generation of black managers by now. Clubs that don't want to try to actually counteract racism can point to Ince, the token interviewee, and say "well, we tried, and he was the only one qualified, but we didn't think he was up to it," without addressing the underlying causal chains that mean Paul Ince is the only candidate from the BAME community qualified for an interview.

That's why the Rooney Rule is so incredibly mild. As a form of positive discrimination, it's coming along at the end of the structural chain of racism and trying to address it there. It can only ever be clumsy and crude, but then so many of the barriers for black people along the way would have been, too. We can tweak it for football's peculiarities (like opening up a BAME coaching role if you don't interview a BAME managerial candidate, as I suggested), but it's one of the few tools that we know does work to redress things and tilt the playing field a little way the other way again.
 
No one invited me to this party?? I'm hurt.

Looks like the relevant information has been giving, though (albeit with less hard numbers than I'd like, personally).

Joke all you like, this is my area of academic expertise; I haven't pulled my views out of my ass.

Carry on.
 
proslo said:
Here's the thing to always keep in mind here: racism is never just one moment. Racism is structural. It's the sum effect of many, many individual moments and decisions, many of which are often unintentional. By focusing on individual acts of discrimination, it confuses and distracts from more important and profound change that is necessary. To quote Avenue Q, *everyone's* a little bit racist, at least some of the time. The best thing to do isn't to bristle at being called a racist, it's for us to self-critique and consider our own role in the structures around us.

This is a real problem with the way anti-racism has been taught and explained for the last few decades, really - by treating racism as just individual acts, it makes it seem like, as long as people aren't openly calling black people the n-word, then "racism" isn't a problem any more - or that racism in football will be "solved" once we go a whole season without anyone making a monkey gesture, that sort of thing. It's deeper than that.

So, in football, there's a lot of stuff that's happening unseen and over a long period of time before we get to the point that Paul Ince isn't hired for a job he isn't qualified for:

First off, you've got the class and race structure of English football's governing bodies, which, as discussed, means that a lot of the people making the most important decisions are older, whiter, and wealthier. Older people tend to stick with what they know as "right", slowing down the change that younger generations want. They're also of a social group which tends to clump together and hire its own (what you might call the "golf club" mentality). It's no coincidence that the whitest, wealthiest sports - polo, golf, sailing, etc. - also tend to be the most exclusionary to women and minorities, either explicitly (like not allowing women to be members of clubs) or implicitly (in that, while there's no rule on not joining, why would you when the culture of the club is so insular and unwelcoming to outsiders).

So already, before we even talk about race, we have a group of people who tend to make decisions for their own in-group. I bet you anything that every single person in a position of serious power in the FA considers racism a terrible thing; yet they might not be cognisant of their tendency to a) be friends with people just like them, and b) hire people who are, or who are just like, their friends. These aren't consciously discriminatory decisions - nobody's running interviews thinking "christ, I hope that no wogs turn up" - but they are *practically* discriminatory in their outcome.

This also goes to, as we've discussed, the idea of the "old boy's network" that governs British football, and which prioritises ex-players. These types of networks are common in many industries in the UK - it's part of the DNA of this nation, which still has respect and deference in many parts of public life to hereditary wealth and status. BAME people are less wealthy, and less connected (the two things are mutually-supportive) than white people, in general.

All of this adds up to hiring processes within football which prioritise the groups already in power, which, in this case, doesn't include BAME people, ex-player or no. That's why you have lots of black players - and plenty of BAME stewards, cleaners, admin staff, whatever - but they don't break through to the coaching and managerial positions of real power. There's a huge difference between hiring someone below you, and then allowing that person to become a peer. All of this also discourages BAME people from even trying to access these networks and positions.

You also have more psychological issues, wherein - as I mentioned - we're all basically racist anyway. Studies have found that white recruiters implicitly discard CVs from people with "ethnic-sounding" names, or that black people are perceived as stronger and more intimidating than white people. The effects of these biases is hard to quantify exactly, but it can be seen manifesting in different parts of public life - and they are *extremely* deep-rooted. Some stereotypes go back centuries, as does economic inequality. Those things can't be overcome within a single generation, let alone one FA-approved five-year plan.

In football, just think how we tend to talk about big, black players, versus equally big white players. It's not as bad as it used to be in the 80s and 90s, of course, but there are undoubtedly perception issues at play, just as in other walks of life, where BAME people often talk about how they have to work much harder than white people to be perceived as similarly competent. Any black person wanting to become a coach is going to struggling against all these biases in beginning a coaching career. Will they be graded more harshly than their white classmates when studying for a badge? Studies have found that that does happen, teachers often unknowingly mark BAME students harsher in schools and colleges, for example.

So: you're a black man or woman wanting to become a coach, or manager, in British football. You've got to overcome the same filters as the white men and women - you've got to be an ex-player with good contacts to even start on the path, a lot of the time. But you've then got extra barriers at every stage. You might not have the money to afford to study, to dedicate yourself to years of trying for a specific role in coaching. You might not have the contacts to get a foot in the door. You've got to deal with recruiters who are going to be coming to you with inbuilt biases around your abilities - maybe you were a creative, technical full-back as a player, but all anyone saw was your pace and your height, so they don't see your experience in the game as the right fit for the role you're applying for. You're not "inventive" enough, maybe, not "clever" enough. And even when you do get in, you've got to deal with the unwelcoming environment, the old boy's network, the fact that promotions come from knowing the right people rather than being the best at your job.

The question here, in the end, isn't "does Chris Hughton get a fair chance when he's interviewed for a job?" It's actually "why, when there's a managerial vacancy, is the BAME shortlist only as long as Chris Hughton?"

This is where Paul Ince comes back into it. The filter that blocks black managers isn't total - obviously - but where it does let people through, it's not doing so anything like fairly. Essentially, Ince was a good player with lots of contacts in the game because of the status he attained as a player, and that made it easier for him to jump the hurdles that stop most of his peers - he's a token, essentially.

Except, of course, he isn't any good at being a manager. That's the danger of tokenism, of thinking "well, we've got one already, so of course the problem isn't there any more". If there truly wasn't any discrimination, we wouldn't still be talking about Paul Ince because we should have a whole new generation of black managers by now. Clubs that don't want to try to actually counteract racism can point to Ince, the token interviewee, and say "well, we tried, and he was the only one qualified, but we didn't think he was up to it," without addressing the underlying causal chains that mean Paul Ince is the only candidate from the BAME community qualified for an interview.

That's why the Rooney Rule is so incredibly mild. As a form of positive discrimination, it's coming along at the end of the structural chain of racism and trying to address it there. It can only ever be clumsy and crude, but then so many of the barriers for black people along the way would have been, too. We can tweak it for football's peculiarities (like opening up a BAME coaching role if you don't interview a BAME managerial candidate, as I suggested), but it's one of the few tools that we know does work to redress things and tilt the playing field a little way the other way again.
Click to expand...
Thanks for taking the time to post this, I must concede to agreeing with most of what you have said. Very thought provoking.

Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk
 
b3h said:
Wow nice man. I'll have a look into the last word as I have no clue what it is.
Click to expand...

Basically, the study of the hierarchies that form within societies. Easiest example would be low, middle, and high income groups.
 
darlowolf64 said:
Another nice gesture by the club. If any of you buggers don't want a scarf then feel free to sent your vouchers my way as I've got a couple of kids who'd love a brand new Wolves scarf ;)
Click to expand...

You're welcome to mine - my kids don't like football
 
Proslo for PM! That was an excellent post.
 
Thanks guys - glad my procrastination from work was useful.

Now, let's get this thread back on track. Something about scarves?
 
Just one question, if things are as bad as being made out, how are any black coaches getting through ? I know they are a minority and please don't for one second think I'm contradicting the obvious, but if things are as systematically racist as we propose how did Deane, Powell, Houghton etc. get through the net ? I'm not including Ince and Hasselbank as they were obviously a product of the good player = good manager theory. Nobody is denying there is a problem but I think it is oversimplified to just blame an 'old boys network' or else there would have been no black managers or coaches at all ?
 
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