Lecturer wins landmark legal case

Why White Working Class Males Fail By Adrian Caffery When I was working as a Careers & Higher Education Adviser at a further education college last year, I attended a conference organised by Linking London, a networking organisation for colleges and universities, where one of the topics discussed was ‘how to tackle under-achievement by white working class boys in schools’. I sat there with a wry smile, as I looked around the room at my fellow educational professionals to observe that I was probably the only white working class ‘boy’ sitting there. I was working as a temporary contractor for this central London FE College because I wasn’t able to find a permanent role and hadn’t had a permanent role for years. I attended an interview yesterday at a London university for a job as a ‘Career Coach’ and wasn’t surprised to see any of the staff, or the eight person interviewing panel, seemed to include a white working class male either. I have had about ten job interviews this year for a job as a Careers Adviser or Career Coach and rarely come across a male on interviewing panels, never mind a white working class male. I always smile to myself when interviewers always ask the question, “can you tell me about your understanding of equal opportunities and diversity?” I often feel like saying, “well there’s obviously no regard for equal opportunities and diversity here because you don’t even have a man in the room, never mind a white working class male.” It seems to me that someone like me with a degree and a post-graduate degree in career guidance along with over ten years’ experience, who also runs their own CV writing business, and who also happens to be a white working class male, consistently and suspiciously fails to make the grade and secure the job offer. You would’ve thought that having a diverse workforce that reflects the ethnic and socio-economic background of the client group they are employed to serve, would be one of the main priorities of any organisation, but especially an educational institute. There is a famous career guidance theorist, well more of sociologist, called Ken Roberts who I remember from studying him on my post-graduate degree in career guidance, whose famous theory is called “Opportunity Structures”, whereby he argues that people’s chances of success in life are largely determined by the environment they are brought up in and the ‘opportunities’ that are available to them, a theory I happen to agree with. If a well educated, well trained, experienced professional career guidance practitioner like myself, who also happens to be a ‘white working class boy’ cannot get a job in an educational institution that puts equality of opportunity and diversity at the forefront of its thinking and hiring practices, then what are the chances of the average white working class boy in this society? Another story from my past, tired and unfulfilled by working as a bricklayer, I studied a degree in Broadcast Journalism and once I’d graduated, managed to get some freelance shifts as a radio journalist in the East Midlands when I was asked one day by a very posh editor, “Why would a bricklayer want to become a journalist?” My reply was “Why not, I think the BBC needs more working class people working in it, not less. I think there’s enough of your sort already.” Needless to say I was not invited back. The truth is and let’s not pull any punches here, there is a general disdain and dislike by the establishment in this country of ‘white working class boys’ and by the establishment, I also mean the recruiters at colleges & universities in the UK, and all of the other professional organisations, who do not want white working class boys to succeed. The powers that be are quite happy for white working class boys to drive a white van or shovel shite on a building site, but when it comes to joining the club of the elite and the establishment, there is no room at the table. Obviously the odd one slips through the net, and that ‘s the one they point at to defend themselves, the token, “we’re not prejudice, we have a prole on our team!” I don’t know what the statistics are, but I would guess that the majority of the population of the UK are white working class, and let’s not forget working class girls and the working classes of all other colours and ethnicities, who all equally suffer under this regime and indeed across the world. Although the working class represent the majority of the population, in professional jobs of all kinds across this country, the working classes represent the minority and in a big way. And as I had to remind a careers adviser colleague of mine recently, there is no law that prohibits discrimination on the grounds of class. Employers can discriminate, not openly of course, that’s just not cricket, on the grounds of class as much as they like with impunity. All other considerations such as race, ethnicity, religion, colour, gender it is illegal to discriminate, although of course it goes on all of the time, as we all know. So when I face a job interview panel who look and sound nothing like me and listen to them harp on about how diverse and inclusive they are, knowing all the while that I don’t have a cat’s chance in hell of landing the job, I think to myself, no wonder the white working classes voted for Brexit and voted for Trump. (incidently I voted for neither). And also when I am in a room of educational professionals who talk about how we, as a society, need to tackle the increasingly poor academic performances of ‘white working class boys’, I again give a wry ironic smile, because if they were serious about tackling the problem, they would be banging down the door of people like me, who actually are ‘white working class boys’ and therefore the best placed to address the issue, and to get involved in solving the problem. But if the two-faced, lip-service paying to equality and diversity shysters, won’t even invite you to sit down at the table with them, even though you have overcome all of the obstacles that a white working class male has to overcome in order to get into a position of influence, then like my chances of getting a job, we don’t stand a cat’s chance in hell of solving the problem of under-achievement by white working class boys in schools. Why encourage them to succeed when we know deep down inside, no one really wants them to, especially the establishment and the powers that be? That’s just cruel and adding insult to injury? They should just be honest and say what they really think, “Keep the peasants, the proles where they are. We don’t want them getting ideas above their station!” But a word to the wise, if the majority not only of the UK, but the entire planet, continue to be ignored, marginalised, patronised and treated with the disdain that the working classes have been, century after century, millennium after millennium, there will be a day of reckoning, and that day of reckoning is coming soon. I hear the barbarians at the gates already. By Adrian Caffery BA (Hons), QCG