On the 14th of November, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report entitled Migration and Social Mobility: The life chances of Britains minority ethnic communities. The response to the report in the nations two leading liberal newspapers was fascinating, and revealed much about the priorities of multiculturalism.
Children of immigrants break class barriers ran the headline in the Independent. The article continued:
“Black people are breaking through the class barrier and entering the middle classes at a faster rate than their white counterparts, according to a new study.” (Independent).
In the same paper, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s commentary was headlined ‘At last, some cheering news to celebrate: More than 45 per cent of Black Britons are now in managerial and professional jobs’
Meanwhile the Guardian reported that:
“Young people from ethnic minority families are transcending Britain’s class system and beating their working class white peers into well-paid jobs, according to a report” (Guardian).
However, a closer look at the Joseph Rowntree website reveals a somewhat less idyllic picture, at least for anyone committed to universal justice and equality. The press release for the report, which both the Guardian and the Independent would have seen, quotes its author, Lucinda Platt, as saying:
“This study shows that social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years in assisting young people to access the educational opportunities that help them into higher status jobs. Britain is still a long way from being a ‘meritocracy’ where social class no longer plays a part in determining children’s chances of well-paid careers.”
Indeed a look at the summary of the report reveals the following:
‘Background remains important. The children of parents in higher social classes are more likely to end up in higher social classes themselves. This is the case even when taking account of individual educational achievement.’...
‘For all the children in the study, the research examined whether relative chances of occupational success depended on class origins. It found that the children of parents from higher social classes were themselves more likely to end up in the professional or managerial classes, even when the children’s own educational achievement was taken into account.
Two factors also independently increase the chances of ending up in a professional or managerial class family: economic assets in the household in which the child was growing up, and having a highly qualified mother. Thus, while education is clearly very important in determining occupational outcomes, class background continues to play a role. This is in addition to the role class background may play in helping towards educational success in the first place.’...
‘While other research has indicated that class background continues to be important, much of that privilege has been shown to operate through educational opportunities and through parents supporting the next generation in achieving educational qualifications. This research shows that a privileged background continues to operate alongside education in increasing chances of more favourable outcomes.
On this evidence, the researcher concludes that the policy ideal of a ‘meritocracy’ in which class and ethnic background no longer play a role is not being fulfilled for the up-and-coming generations.’
So, charged with investigating the relationship between social mobility and ethnicity, Lucinda Platt has found that:
“social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years in assisting young people to access the educational opportunities that help them into higher status jobs.”
Yet the reaction of the Independent is that this is ‘cheering news to celebrate. Why?
A similar surprise occurs in the pages of the OFSTED report, ‘Educational Inequality: Mapping Race, Class and Gender’. This study, prepared as it was in the wake of the Macpherson report, unsurprisingly focused more on race than either class or gender. It identified as one of its priorities ‘developing an educational agenda with regard to racial equality. And so it should; the educational underachievement of black children is a reality black children are the highest achieving of all ethnic groups at five years old, yet are the lowest achieving at sixteen – and it needs to be addressed.
Having been clear about its focus on race from the outset, the report introduces the issue of class about half way through. A graphic is shown illustrating educational inequalities in terms of gender, race and social class where:
- The gender gap is the smallest: girls do 6% better than the national average, boys 3% worse, or a 9% gap. – Followed by race: white children as a group do about 2% above the national average, African Caribbean children 16-17% below, or about a 20% gap. – Last but by no means least comes the social class gap: children from ‘managerial/ professional’ backgrounds score 22-23% above the national average, while children from ‘unskilled manual’ backgrounds score around 25% below the national average, a gap of almost 50%.
So, to recap: this is a report into educational inequality. It focuses primarily on race, and all its policy recommendations focus on race. Yet the same report reveals that the biggest factor in educational inequality is not race, but class, and acknowledges so in its text:
There is a strong, direct association between social class background and success in education: put simply, the higher a childs social class, the greater are their attainments on average This is one of the longest-established trends in British education but the association is not static. Indeed, there is evidence that the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown since the late 1980s generally pupils from non-manual backgrounds have significantly higher educational attainments, as a group, than their peers of the same ethnic origin but from manual households our data shows gender to be a less problematic issue than the significant disadvantage of ‘race’, and the even greater inequality of class.
Yet, despite all this, the focus of the report is on race, not class. Again we ask why?
The report demonstrates that anyone who is seriously committed to equality in education has to be committed to equality in general. One cannot be reduced without the other. However, the report was commissioned by New Labour. New Labour has no interest in reducing socio-economic inequality. In fact, in common with the dominant line of thinking of the political establishment over the last thirty years, they are committed to increasing inequality.
The two reports from OFSTED and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, illustrate how multiculturalism not only fails to question the neo-liberal drive towards economic inequality, but becomes reconciled with it. It would appear that the aim of this multiculturalism is not to bring about equality between socio-economic groups, but within socio-economic groups.
This multiculturalism is quite prepared to accept that social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years and that the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown since the late 1980s, just as long as the increasing numbers of working class children being let down by the educational system are spread proportionately between ethnic groups, and that the middle-class is becoming suitably multi-racial.
What matters to such multiculturalism is not the 50% educational gap that existed between middle-class children and working-class children in 1997 thats taken as a given-, but the 5% gap that existed between white working-class children and black working-class children in 1997. Or, more likely:
African-Caribbean pupils from non-manual homes are the lowest attaining of the middle-class groups. In some cases they are barely matching the attainments of working class pupils in other ethnic groups.
It is a multiculturalism that does not seek to bring about an end to class-based inequality; it accepts class-based inequality as a starting point and then seeks to put racial quotas on it. Yasmin Alibhai-Browns cry of cheering news to celebrate is shown up for what it is when compared to the analysis of Bobby Seale, founder of the nationalist Black Panthers, in 1970:
“Those who want to obscure the struggle with ethnic differences are the ones who are aiding and maintaining the exploitation of the masses of the people: poor whites, poor blacks, browns, red Indians, poor Chinese and Japanese, and the workers at large So in essence it is not at all a race struggle. We’re rapidly educating people to this So let me emphasize again – we believe our fight is a class struggle and not a race struggle.”
A multiculturalism that has no interest in questions of class – indeed the ideological objective it sets itself is to first mask and thus dispute the pivotal role class plays in contemporary society – cannot possibly be termed progressive or radical. It is, in the truest sense of the word, conservative.
On the 14th of November, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report entitled Migration and Social Mobility: The life chances of Britains minority ethnic communities. The response to the report in the nations two leading liberal newspapers was fascinating, and revealed much about the priorities of multiculturalism.
Children of immigrants break class barriers ran the headline in the Independent. The article continued:
“Black people are breaking through the class barrier and entering the middle classes at a faster rate than their white counterparts, according to a new study.” (Independent).
In the same paper, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s commentary was headlined ‘At last, some cheering news to celebrate: More than 45 per cent of Black Britons are now in managerial and professional jobs’
Meanwhile the Guardian reported that:
“Young people from ethnic minority families are transcending Britain’s class system and beating their working class white peers into well-paid jobs, according to a report” (Guardian).
However, a closer look at the Joseph Rowntree website reveals a somewhat less idyllic picture, at least for anyone committed to universal justice and equality. The press release for the report, which both the Guardian and the Independent would have seen, quotes its author, Lucinda Platt, as saying:
“This study shows that social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years in assisting young people to access the educational opportunities that help them into higher status jobs. Britain is still a long way from being a ‘meritocracy’ where social class no longer plays a part in determining children’s chances of well-paid careers.”
Indeed a look at the summary of the report reveals the following:
‘Background remains important. The children of parents in higher social classes are more likely to end up in higher social classes themselves. This is the case even when taking account of individual educational achievement.’...
‘For all the children in the study, the research examined whether relative chances of occupational success depended on class origins. It found that the children of parents from higher social classes were themselves more likely to end up in the professional or managerial classes, even when the children’s own educational achievement was taken into account.
Two factors also independently increase the chances of ending up in a professional or managerial class family: economic assets in the household in which the child was growing up, and having a highly qualified mother. Thus, while education is clearly very important in determining occupational outcomes, class background continues to play a role. This is in addition to the role class background may play in helping towards educational success in the first place.’...
‘While other research has indicated that class background continues to be important, much of that privilege has been shown to operate through educational opportunities and through parents supporting the next generation in achieving educational qualifications. This research shows that a privileged background continues to operate alongside education in increasing chances of more favourable outcomes.
On this evidence, the researcher concludes that the policy ideal of a ‘meritocracy’ in which class and ethnic background no longer play a role is not being fulfilled for the up-and-coming generations.’
So, charged with investigating the relationship between social mobility and ethnicity, Lucinda Platt has found that:
“social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years in assisting young people to access the educational opportunities that help them into higher status jobs.”
Yet the reaction of the Independent is that this is ‘cheering news to celebrate. Why?
A similar surprise occurs in the pages of the OFSTED report, ‘Educational Inequality: Mapping Race, Class and Gender’. This study, prepared as it was in the wake of the Macpherson report, unsurprisingly focused more on race than either class or gender. It identified as one of its priorities ‘developing an educational agenda with regard to racial equality. And so it should; the educational underachievement of black children is a reality black children are the highest achieving of all ethnic groups at five years old, yet are the lowest achieving at sixteen – and it needs to be addressed.
Having been clear about its focus on race from the outset, the report introduces the issue of class about half way through. A graphic is shown illustrating educational inequalities in terms of gender, race and social class where:
- The gender gap is the smallest: girls do 6% better than the national average, boys 3% worse, or a 9% gap. – Followed by race: white children as a group do about 2% above the national average, African Caribbean children 16-17% below, or about a 20% gap. – Last but by no means least comes the social class gap: children from ‘managerial/ professional’ backgrounds score 22-23% above the national average, while children from ‘unskilled manual’ backgrounds score around 25% below the national average, a gap of almost 50%.
So, to recap: this is a report into educational inequality. It focuses primarily on race, and all its policy recommendations focus on race. Yet the same report reveals that the biggest factor in educational inequality is not race, but class, and acknowledges so in its text:
There is a strong, direct association between social class background and success in education: put simply, the higher a childs social class, the greater are their attainments on average This is one of the longest-established trends in British education but the association is not static. Indeed, there is evidence that the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown since the late 1980s generally pupils from non-manual backgrounds have significantly higher educational attainments, as a group, than their peers of the same ethnic origin but from manual households our data shows gender to be a less problematic issue than the significant disadvantage of ‘race’, and the even greater inequality of class.
Yet, despite all this, the focus of the report is on race, not class. Again we ask why?
The report demonstrates that anyone who is seriously committed to equality in education has to be committed to equality in general. One cannot be reduced without the other. However, the report was commissioned by New Labour. New Labour has no interest in reducing socio-economic inequality. In fact, in common with the dominant line of thinking of the political establishment over the last thirty years, they are committed to increasing inequality.
The two reports from OFSTED and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, illustrate how multiculturalism not only fails to question the neo-liberal drive towards economic inequality, but becomes reconciled with it. It would appear that the aim of this multiculturalism is not to bring about equality between socio-economic groups, but within socio-economic groups.
This multiculturalism is quite prepared to accept that social class and privilege have retained their importance in the past thirty years and that the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown since the late 1980s, just as long as the increasing numbers of working class children being let down by the educational system are spread proportionately between ethnic groups, and that the middle-class is becoming suitably multi-racial.
What matters to such multiculturalism is not the 50% educational gap that existed between middle-class children and working-class children in 1997 thats taken as a given-, but the 5% gap that existed between white working-class children and black working-class children in 1997. Or, more likely:
African-Caribbean pupils from non-manual homes are the lowest attaining of the middle-class groups. In some cases they are barely matching the attainments of working class pupils in other ethnic groups.
It is a multiculturalism that does not seek to bring about an end to class-based inequality; it accepts class-based inequality as a starting point and then seeks to put racial quotas on it. Yasmin Alibhai-Browns cry of cheering news to celebrate is shown up for what it is when compared to the analysis of Bobby Seale, founder of the nationalist Black Panthers, in 1970:
“Those who want to obscure the struggle with ethnic differences are the ones who are aiding and maintaining the exploitation of the masses of the people: poor whites, poor blacks, browns, red Indians, poor Chinese and Japanese, and the workers at large So in essence it is not at all a race struggle. We’re rapidly educating people to this So let me emphasize again – we believe our fight is a class struggle and not a race struggle.”
A multiculturalism that has no interest in questions of class – indeed the ideological objective it sets itself is to first mask and thus dispute the pivotal role class plays in contemporary society – cannot possibly be termed progressive or radical. It is, in the truest sense of the word, conservative.