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REDRESSING IMBALANCE

3rd June 1999, Page 26
3rd June 1999
Page 26
Page 27
Page 26, 3rd June 1999 — REDRESSING IMBALANCE
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As a white, British international freight driver I wish to congratulate both David Graik and Commercial Motor for a really excellent piece of journalism in your two-page spread on racism and British haulage ("Road racism", CM 20-26 May).

The article was in the best traditions of objective reporting. I do have one minor criticism, though: the use throughout of "ethnic" to identify ethnic minorities. As an Anglo-Saxon I am "ethnic", albeit a member of the majority racial group in the English part of the UK.

I would like to make a few comments following various conversations I have had with other working truck drivers about race and equal opportunities policies. Neither anti-racist nor equal opportunities policies are about "giving" anything to anyone, nor are they about "doing good": they are about redressing an imbalance and releasing people's abilities where there is discrimination, in order that we all benefit.

Many people assume it is somehow "normal" or "natural" to be white, male, able-bodied and heterosexual. Most of us in the UK are most of these things--although not as many as people assume. In the case of race (as well as other "usually excluded groups"), there is a clear imbalance, as the article demonstrates, in the number of black people employed in the higher status C+E group of drivers' jobs.

Attempts at equal opportunities policies are not aimed at upsetting any natural order but are a practical response to both injustice and waste of human potential.

Failure to address these issues can only result in the sort of social divisions that led to the Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho nail bombs.

Rachael Webb,


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