Sara Thornton, head of Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), has said the law should be changed so forces can actively discriminate against white recruits in order to increase diversity.
Currently, discriminating against people in job recruitment on the basis of certain “protected characteristics”, including race, sex, and sexuality, is technically illegal under the Equality Act of 2010.
However, excluding certain people — generally white people, or at least white males — from supposed internships, even if they pay more than a typical working-class job, or deprioritising them from training schemes or workshops designed to boost employment prospects, is allowable under the act’s so-called “positive action” provisions.
While these provisions are deployed with enthusiasm by many British police forces, in the NPCC leader’s view they do not go far enough — and the law should be changed to allow outright “positive discrimination” so the proportion of white people in law enforcement can be reduced more rapidly.
Ms Thornton, Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, complained that favouring ethnic minority recruits was “unlawful at the moment,” and “If you want to do something to give a shock to the system and say we can’t wait to 2052 [to bring the proportion of ethnic minority police up to their share of the general population], I think we need to do something different.”
Ethnic minorities officially account for 14 percent of Britain’s general population, according to the 2011 census — although it is increasing at an exponential rate due to mass migration and higher birth rates among ethnic minority mothers, making it hard for the police to keep pace in terms of the ethnic breakdown of their personnel.
“I think there’s an argument that we could select on merit and put people into a pool [of recruits] and then appoint on [ethnic] representation,” Thornton suggested, somewhat self-contradictorily.
“It is a political judgment, isn’t it? How important is this? If it’s important, then I think you need to look at [postive discrimination],” she asserted.
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