Jacob Rees-Mogg blasts UNICEF by saying the introduction of breakfast packs to support South London children is a bit of unwelcome politicking. "Spend charitable money on starving children", he says.
Liz Truss (Equalities Minister) is dismissive of 'Unconscious Bias Training'. She has not suggested a alternative. She see this training as part of an ideological conspiracy against 'right wing' politics. In a lecture entitled 'Fight for Fairness', she argued that her childhood education was dominated by teaching on racism and equality rather than reading and writing. It didn't go so badly for her. But she is also right about the politics. She is touching on a logic that will not stop, and it includes the whole government brief.
These are my thoughts:
With the mention of Michel Foucault, the chattering classes (including me) dive for the e-encyclopedia of their choice. Foucault surely explains why 'Unconscious Bias Training' is not enough in itself. The powerful status quo of international societal beliefs, assumptions and expected behaviours are more that individuals can change. Two things are required. The desire for change, and a consensus for change. Normally change is motivated by a crisis. There are exceptions, such as equality and protection offered to LGBT people. (I use the word offered, because it can be taken away.)
Change in crisis can be for good and bad. Much of what we see around us is the way it is, because it suits people for it to be the way it is. Poverty, inequality, sexism, and even long NHS waiting lists. We are experience this with the Covid19 crisis, were virtually every country is following the same programme, with the idea that questioning current practice is dangerous and subversive. The idea of challenging current beliefs and expectations is not easy. But this is also true on a vast number of issues.
1) The capitalist system rewards the powerful and privileged It extenuates division including that by race, gender and disability. My daughter was amused to receive a £10 Christmas bonus on her disability benefits. I stuck me that this gesture probably cost the public purse millions. Most employer would know that doing this would be ridiculed by their middle class work force.
2) Discovering and exposing inequality is much harder than it might seem. We are not able to see the 'wood for the trees'. It is easy for us to look back at past societies and clearly see the errors they apparently could not see for themselves. This privilege will be past to our children's children. The greatest inequalities are recorded in national charts of 'age of average death', income distribution, and child labour. These are all intensely political statistics.
2) Charity. There is an irony that a rich country, through the use of 'soft power' may be transferring wealth to projects in poorer countries which add to the UK national debt. But of course, the fact that the UK is allowed to have such a large national debt is the real story here. Evan Davis, in his book 'Make in Britain: How the nation makes its living' (2011) explains that Britain is like a premiership footballer who with no savings at all, is given a mortgage of millions on the basis that his potential to pay back the loan is secure. Banks loan to rich countries because they believe their investment is sound.
Charity is the transfer of a little bit of power to the powerless, enough to address the present discomfort and not threaten the status quo. Any more would attract attention, and along would come the vampires of greed to take it away. So we are locked in a the paradigm of 'the best of all possible world'. The famous quote from Christian Aid's chief economist. Question: "what is worse for a country than being exploited by a multinational corporation? Answer: not being exploited by a multinational corporation."
Unconscious bias awareness can help us recognises that 'sponsoring' children to attend school in far off countries is patronising. We forget that we assume a right for our own children to attend school without some subservient contract with a rich donor. Being obliged to send photo's, school reports and grateful Christmas/ (whatever festival is important to the donor) cards.
'White Saviour' is the charge. So what do we do? We change the paradigm, and this it political. We enter the world of human rights. British society has already made this shift so that every person has a right to good quality health, housing, education, and financial support. This is no longer questioned, though perhaps we can question whether is is 'good enough'. This is how we know that 'Black Lives Matter', when we see the same principle applied across the world. When we have got it right for the poorer countries, we can be sure that we have got it right across our own country.
