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February 28, 2005
Victims and their oppressors
According to David Cracknell in the Sunday Times, the Government is about to publish a bill that will make it illegal for the providers of any goods or services - such as hotels, shops, pubs or restaurants - to refuse service to someone because of their religion. It had been expected that discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation would also be included, but the report says that Downing Street fears that Muslims might feel offended if they were ‘lumped together’ with homosexuals in the same bill.
This is not the first time that one of the official victim groups in society has squabbled with the Government over the planned Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). Until now there have been three protected groups: women, ethnic minorities and disabled people. Three new categories are to be added: sexual orientation, religion or belief, and age. A few months ago I attended a meeting in the House of Commons where enthusiasts for gender equality objected to being ‘lumped in’ with old people, who they felt were not as deserving of victim status as women, and when the Government issued a consultation document on the CEHR, the Commission for Racial Equality was opposed to the initial plan because it lost some of its privileges. Above all, it did not want to lose coercive powers to punish employers for disobedience.
Once the protected status of all six victim groups is legally in force, there won’t be very many people left who can’t fit into one or more of the categories, leaving white males as the undisputed oppressors of all the others.
Posted by David Green at February 28, 2005 05:28 PM
Comments
Presumably, as the categories are not mutually exclusive, substantial numbers of white males are entitled to victim status eg gays, the young (clearly a demonised and highly oppressed minority); the old; members of religious minorities (which nowadays presumably means members any religious group whatever) etc. etc. Once these allowances are made, the number of non-victim status white males could be quite small, making the proportion of oppressors to the oppressed very small indeed, and perhaps for that reason deserving of minority status.
Posted by: A.McNeill at March 2, 2005 01:35 PM
Or it could end up like the USA where (if memory serves me correctly) a survey revealed that 138% (or thereabouts) of the population considered that they belonged to a deserving minority.
Not sure how that works on multiple monority-ism. Perhaps a black lesbian single mother could qualify on 4 counts to boost the total (and if she was in a wheelchair, that would make her disabled too, so make that a count of 5).
Me? I'm the only sane man in the lunatic assylum which make me .... a what?
Posted by: PhilB at March 3, 2005 12:08 PM
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