Racism is not a big problem in Britain

and it takes away energy from things that are

(I thought I'd publish this today, while Humza Yousaf is still First Minister of Scotland)

Executive political offices in Britain

In Britain the four biggest executive political offices are, with their current holders pictured above:

• the Prime Minister, who is the UK's head of government -- current holder Rishi Sunak

• the Mayor of London -- current holder Sadiq Khan

• the First Minister of Scotland -- current holder Humza Yousaf (as of 29 Apr 2024, he has announced his intention to resign, but stays in office until there is a successor)

• the First Minister of Wales -- current holder Vaughan Gething

These four people have one thing in common -- none of them are white. (Not that I am complaining about this -- I don’t give a flying fuck what colour their skin is, it could be purple with yellow blotches for all the difference it makes. The important thing, the only important thing, about politicians is whether they execute the right policies, i.e. those that improve people's lives.)

Rishi Sunak is of Indian Hindu ancestry. Sadiq Khan is of Pakistani Muslim ancestry, as is Humza Yousaf. And Vaughan Gething is of mixed Welsh and Zambian ancestry.

How likely is that?

What is the probability of all these top jobs being held by non-white people? Let’s do the maths.

According to Wikipedia, 83.3% of people in the UK are white. So the probability of all the people in the top four jobs being non-white is (1-0.833)^4 or 0.07%. To put it another way there's a 1 in 1286 chance of it happening. So if, on average, people doing these jobs have a term of office of 4 years, then one would change every year and all of them being non-white would happen about once every 1286 years.

If there is significant racial discrimination against non-white people in Britain, then it would be harder for them to get these top jobs. For example, if it was twice as hard (which it would easily be if there was a small amount of conscious or subconscious discrimination against them on each of the hurdles they'd have to cross to get the top jobs), then the probability of the 4 top jobs all going to non-whites would be 1/16th as likely, thus it would be a once in 20,000 year event.

Thus I conclude that it is very unlikely that there is significant discrimination against non-white people in Britain, at least as far as getting one of the 4 top political jobs is concerned.

Does racism exist, then?

Of course it does. It's just that it's not a big problem, and giving lots of attention to it is crowding out attention that should instead go to more important problems. Which problems? Here's a few, straight off the top of my head:

(1) First-Past-The-Post as the voting system used in UK parliamentary elections. FPTP is undemocratic and thus makes it harder for voters to impose their will on the ruling class, which is the whole point of democratic elections; no wonder the ruling class, in the shape of the Tory and Labour parties, supports FPTP! The electoral system determines who gets elected, and those people determine what the government does, so fixing this issue is upstream of fixing every other issue in politics.

(2) Affordable housing. The average house in Britain costs about £280,000 even though it is perfectly possible to build houses for a small fraction of that. People should be able to buy or rent a house much more cheaply, and if they could then they'd be a lot better off. Imagine if your income stayed the same but your housing costs were halved, or even quartered; you'd have more disposable income.

(3) Worse outcomes for people who went to state schools compared to those privately educated. Of the four people named above, two (Sunak and Yousaf) are privately educated and the other two went to state schools. According to the UK government "Just 7% of British people are privately educated, compared to two-fifths (39%) of those in top positions", but for some reason the ruling class doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. It's almost as if the ruling class looks after its own. Class is a far more important determiner of people’s life outcomes than race, so it’s no wonder the ruling class would rather people talked about race than class.

(4) The Russian invasion of Ukraine, more precisely the the lack of sufficient Western response to it. Some people might say that it's not our problem, and it's true that it doesn't directly and immediately affect Britain. Then again the battle of Adrianople in 378 didn't directly and immediately affect anyone living in France or Spain at the time, but it did in the coming decades as the Western Roman Empire collapsed. If Russia beats Ukraine, that makes it more likely that in the coming decades the West will fall, and we (or our grandchildren) will end up in Russian or Chinese concentration camps.

(5) The high cost of electricity and gas, ramped up so private companies can make an unearned fortune at the cost of the people. The cost of generating electricity and getting gas out of the North Sea hasn't gone up much.