This is a shockingly bad piece by Neil O’Brien. It conflates legitimate journalism with disgusting racist abuse on Twitter, and that a Black journalist doing her job bears some sort of responsibility for the latter.
O’Brien reveals an appalling lack of understanding about anti-Black racism and how it manifests here. This is absolutely *not* the point that was being made about Patel trying to silence a Black MP from talking about her experiences of anti-Black racism.
O’Brien makes a common mistake here: he assumes non-white people can never be racist. But there’s eg a long history of anti-Black racism in the East African Asian community. I wrote about this - and why Patel was indeed gaslighting Flo Eshalomi - here.
Also: I hate this line. If you’re a self-described “middle-aged white guy” mocking yourself for your lack of sensitivity to racism (think this is what he is doing?) please try & understand that which you have zero experience of before firing off a piece attacking people of colour
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1) If you couldn’t ensure regular mass testing available on campus why get unis back this term, as unpalatable as not doing so would have been? Getting 100s of students to self isolate or trying to limit their movement is worse?
2) Wouldn’t it have been better to focus on distance learning for the first term/semester and give students a fee rebate for the whole of first year?
(It would require provision for young people and mature students who couldn’t live at home eg care leavers.)
This would have been really awful for a generation of young people already failed by A level saga, but is it better than having to self isolate in box rooms in halls for weeks? Feels like govt should have at least asked these qus.
The A level fiasco has exposed the craziness of a system where - for no good reason - we think it’s absolutely key to sort a BBC and a BCD student into different universities. Why? My column:
A levels may be v g at ranking the ability of young ppl to take an exam in any given day but is that really the be all and end all when it comes to their ability to do well at a job or university?
As ppl like @Samfr & @daisychristo have pointed out though other ways of ranking - teacher assessment, coursework - also have problems with reliability.
This is what I would do with university admissions if the plan is to revert to teacher-predicted grades were I in government (there are legal issues but I think every potential solution has legal issues?) (1/4)
1. Lift cap on admissions for 2020 and allow universities to determine their own intake numbers.
2. Ask most selective/over subscribed unis to prioritise young people from disadvantaged backgrounds for entry based on teacher-predicted grades. (2/4)
3. Ask them to allocate remaining places for this year by lottery. Those unsuccessful in lottery can opt to defer or go to insurance offer.
4. Fully compensate those less selective unis that as a result can’t fill places. Expensive but fair. (3/4)
All universities should just agree to admit all young people who they have made conditional offers to, based on their teacher-predicted grades. (The idea they can reliably select the best candidates on the basis of a UCAS form or an interview is anyway a bit of a myth.)
It would do absolutely no damage to the system whatsoever and would be right and fair for a cohort of young people who have already been royally screwed over by the pandemic.
This piecemeal uni-by-uni approach is very unfair as it means a young person's chance of making their uni if their results have been downgraded is arbitrary, and it is understandably causing awful anxiety for young people.
The letter is very clearly NOT saying this. It is pointing out there are differences between racism towards Asian and Black people & saying experience of former does not make you an authority on latter, a sentiment that as a British Asian I wholeheartedly agree with.
I would never ever tell someone who is black that they shouldn’t lecture me about racism simply because I’ve experienced racism myself. It’s an *awful* thing to say.
Even more awful when you put it in the context of the anti-Black racism that we know exists in some parts of Asian communities.