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Work, Productivity and Pay

Wanjiru Njoya, PhD (Cantab.) MA (Oxon.) LLM (Hull) LLB (Nairobi) PCAP (Exeter)
​Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy

​​​

Equal Opportunities

3/4/2021

 
Picture
All cartoons are created equal
But my equal opportunities are bigger than your equal opportunities

​'Equal opportunities' is a concept denoting the bundle of rights, claims and privileges which all residents of the UK (legal and illegal) are given by the government. The main role of a government, especially a Conservative government that wishes to show how good they are, is to give everyone their equal opportunities.​ All human beings are born equal, and thus deserve to demand their fair share of equal opportunities from their elected representatives, plus an extra portion of equal opportunities for those whose ancestors suffered from historical grievances.

​'There are very serious issues that our society faces to do with racism that we need to address.'

Prime Minister 
​
Good man, he can start by organising all the different races into the correct groupings and giving each racial group their designated equal opportunities. He needs to send out an official from No 10, armed with equal jobs, equal promotions and guaranteed equal pay rises for all the races. The darker your skin, the bigger your bundle of equal opportunities needs to be, to face our very serious issues to do with racism and atone for historical grievances.

What next, after you've been given your equal opportunities? This can get a bit tricky because sometimes, you look around and other people seem to have bigger equal opportunities than yours. Their job is better. Their promotion is swifter, and they got a heftier pay rise. This has enabled them to own a bigger house, drive a bigger car, and go out with prettier people. 

How did this inequality happen? All the opportunities are supposed to be equal! The opportunities could not possibly be equal, because by looking around you can see that some people were given better stuff! Time to complain.

Complaining is done by filing a discrimination claim under the Equality Act. Politicians can say whatever they want, but your real power comes from filing Equality Act claims. Time to get started, my friends. Let's get equal opportunities done.

The first step in proving that your equal opportunities are not fit for purpose is to find someone with whom to compare yourself. In legal terminology this person is called a comparator. The success of your case depends on selecting the right comparator.

The comparator must be someone who was given bigger equal opportunities than yours. You will prove this by showing that they have more money, wealth and power than you. They eat better food and wear better designer gear and generally have an easier life. Unfair!

The comparator has to be a different race, because the size of equal opportunities is measured by reference to race. If you are black you can't select rich black footballers or a billionaire like Kanye West as your comparator. You also can't choose someone like Oprah Winfrey because although she's a billionaire (which will help your claim) she is also a woman (and selecting women would be unfair). Reader, you need a white man.

You can't select a poor white man who grew up on a sink estate and doesn't have two pennies to rub together, as that won't work for your equal opportunities complaint. Poor white men are 100% irrelevant to equal opportunities campaigns. Your white male targets must be rich. Pay attention.

I would recommend selecting someone like Elon Musk. It's patently unfair that Elon Musk was given equal opportunities that include space travel and cool electronic gadgets, when your equal opportunities didn't include any of that.

Now you have a suitable comparator, you can move to the next step which is proving institutional racism. Institutional racism magnifies the equal opportunities of white men at the expense of everyone else. The legal test for institutional racism has two stages.

First, because we wisely chose a comparator who dabbles in inter-galactic travel, we must show that building space rockets requires skills and qualifications which were given to Elon Musk and were not given to you. This is easy to show. Do you have a degree in Physics? Do you have any experience in space travel? Enough said. Proceed to stage two.

Second, we must show that people like Elon Musk, that is all white men (pay attention) are more likely to be handed space science skills and qualifications on a plate than, let's say, black women. This is called disparate impact or indirect discrimination - it is unfair for space science qualifications to be needed when everyone knows that the government gives white men equal opportunities that include space science qualifications. Yet black women are given poxy equal opportunities that include nothing.

Once you have proved that white men are overrepresented among space scientists, it follows that black women are underrepresented. Your case of institutional racism is thus proved. Congratulations. Now for your remedy.

To fix the serious problems with racism the government will now be required to equalise your opportunities. This can be done in a few ways:
  • Quotas for black women in space travel.
  • Redistribution of cool electronic toys, so everyone has an equal opportunity to play with driverless cars.
  • The number of scientists involved in any project should reflect the same racial proportion as members of society generally. Black people are currently 50% of the British population and rising (we're working on it, haha) so we need equal opportunities in at least 50% of the available science projects, thanks.
  • A government official should inspect all the science labs, and if there are no black folk in there, some need to be installed urgently. Take out some white men, to create more space.

As this example shows, once you spot a lack of equal opportunities it's easy to fix the situation. It's also easy to select a comparator. The only difficult part comes at the beginning, when the equal opportunities are being handed out in the first place. At that early stage, to be fair to the government, it's very difficult to know whether the opportunities are equal or not. We have to wait and see what people do with their equal opportunities, as that will reveal whether the opportunities were equal or not in the first place.

I know my equal opportunities are not the same as Elon Musk's equal opportunities. Just by showing up as a white man, dripping with his white privilege, he was handed a huge fortune on a plate. I'm not jealous of him or anything, and I haven't an envious bone in my body, but I have often wondered why it's fair that he gets to invent cool gadgets and I don't? This bothers me because we are the same age, and yet he earns more money in one second than I will earn in my lifetime. How did that happen, if we were both given identical equal opportunities? I feel like I should have the same things he has. Just because he is a white man does not mean his life has more value than mine. 

These inequalities prove that institutional racism exists. The only difference between Mr Musk and I is that he is a white man and I am a black woman. I call racism. We are exactly the same in all other respects, equal in the eyes of God. Yet he gets to live a fun life going on space adventures while I am forced to spend my entire life stuck on earth, complaining about racism and furiously decolonising my syllabus. How many of us will never have the opportunity to travel to Mars, just because of the colour of our skin? The battle for equal opportunities has only just begun.

Nikki link
3/4/2021 02:40:57 pm

Reminds me of when I was leaving school in 1999 and you had to have an interview with a careers advisor on what you wanted to do next. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do, but I'd had enough of studying. I didn't want to go to uni and end up with massive debts. I was quite happy to just get a job - any job and experience earning money for the first time. Having grown up in a single parent family, money was always tight. Then as now, there was a massive drive to get more women into male-dominated jobs, such as science. Wokeness had yet to be invented, although its ancestor was in full sway. On my school walls were posters about equal rights, "Women can do anything!" "The 21st Century is Female" "Maths needs Matriachs." The careers advisor I spoke to tried her level best to consider studying maths and science at A level. To no avail of course. I had zero interest in science. Maths was, and still is a subject I struggle with, especially arithmetic. I had extra tuition in maths as I found it so difficult. It also bored me to tears. Art, design and gardening were my interests, but my advisor scorned those, claiming that creative subjects were pointless and not worth pursuing. I was left feeling like a failure because I'd not followed the doctrine of "females must study science!" But - if equal opportunities exist now, so why can't I do whatever I want, without being judged?

Wanjiru Njoya
3/4/2021 03:30:04 pm

"Women can do anything!" "The 21st Century is Female" "Maths needs Matriarchs." Haha, these slogans are hilarious. Boys should do maths because they like doing maths, but girls should do maths because Maths Needs Matriarchs?

Your careers advisor must have drunk the Equality Kool-Aid, and was doing her best to get you to swallow it too. There is something deeply tragic about a career advisor "encouraging" women to improve themselves by telling them that their creative talents are pointless. What's that, encouragement by discouragement? Maybe she wanted to tear you down so you could 'build back better', this time with Extra Maths added?

Good for the world that you decided to follow your own talent and passion. We all do our best by being who we are and ignoring the judgy-pantses who want everyone to look the same and be the same.

Nikki link
3/4/2021 05:03:53 pm

Thanks! Yes, I can still see those disapproving eyes peering from behind those horn-rimmed glasses. Some of those advisors were hooked up to Kool Aid via an intravenous drip. From experience, I can say that working in an all-female office is the absolute worst. Sisters looking out for each other? Not in my case, being extremely quiet and not sharing the same interests as them. The bullying knocked my confidence a lot in my 20s. Working from home as an artist the past few years has been great, but I do a little part time cleaning job as well so at least I get out of the house. I've never earned a lot, but I do feel fulfilled.

Wanjiru Njoya
3/4/2021 08:00:01 pm

Your amazing art will do more to defend western civilisation than all the Woke Academics put together. One image reflects a thousand words, and I find your work so expressive. I am so falling in love with your POM. They exude such character and bonhomie. Your career adviser can put that in her pipe, and smoke on it.

I guess you feel fulfilled in your life because you stayed true to yourself and kept your authentic voice and your sense of humour. That's worth more than gold.

As for the sisterhood, sadly I have experienced them. Feminists are scary creatures. They tell you off if they think you're doing being-a-woman wrong. They get cross if they see you laughing at jokes. They don't allow you to read the Daily Mail, you have to do that in secret or they will pulverise you. You have to keep a cats-bum face at all times when they are around, in case they suspect you of being happy. If they suspect you are happy they will target you and destroy you. They won't leave you alone until you are truly miserable. You are well rid. No amount of money is worth that kind of aggro.

David Monid
7/4/2021 01:55:04 am

Dr Njoya you write such wonderful articles - a shame so many of them have zero comments. Have you thought about reaching a bigger audience? I recommend Quilette and the Critic. Spiked gets more hits but gets tarred with the far-right brush. There's also the Conservative Woman. As you're in the UK, All In Britain might be worth checking out too.

Wanjiru Njoya
7/4/2021 09:20:06 am

Thank you for your kind words! Yes, those are all great papers. I wrote once for the Critic on BLM and the best thing about that piece was the hilarious cartoon they drew to go along with the article: 'micro aggress me!' Brilliant.

Not worried about papers tarred with the far-right brush. These days we're all far-right. The actual far-right must be very confused to see what the alleged far-right looks like now, with conservative black men being compared to Goebbels.

Jens
10/4/2021 11:37:36 am

Hi Wanjiru,
another great article! And I second what David Monid said, try to publish in spiked (Wilfred Reilly for example writes there). You deserve a bigger audience.

Wanjiru Njoya
10/4/2021 01:32:27 pm

I love the freedom of having no audience. I can say whatever I want, without worrying about upsetting 'the audience'. It's almost like having free speech! Great fun.

Jens
11/4/2021 10:05:18 am

Haha, yeah, you're probably right ... it's not important how many read it, but that you wrote it. And nothing smells as sweet as freedom ...

Dan
28/5/2021 10:22:12 am

Wanjiru, I only discovered you today through your August article in The Critic, but I think I’m in love with your wit, wisdom and writing style. Brilliant


Comments are closed.

    Wanjiru Njoya

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