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The Great British Bake Off - Why Does It Offend Some People?
Appparently having eight out of the twelve contestants being of white Northern European extraction isn't enough. The BBC had the audacity to include two from Asian background, a biracial woman and a bloke from S.E. Asia.
One of the contestants had tattoos, which was enough for Quinten Letts to remark on (only God knows why)!
If this is evidence of the BBC 'box ticking', what is the answer? Should competitions such as these be open only to those who can prove their Britishness going back ten generations?
And does this suggest that those on the political right secretly believe that if you have brown skin, any success you may have is nothing to do with your skills or qualities, but because of preferential treatment (ie. if you're not white, you're not as good)?
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One of the contestants had tattoos, which was enough for Quinten Letts to remark on (only God knows why)!
If this is evidence of the BBC 'box ticking', what is the answer? Should competitions such as these be open only to those who can prove their Britishness going back ten generations?
And does this suggest that those on the political right secretly believe that if you have brown skin, any success you may have is nothing to do with your skills or qualities, but because of preferential treatment (ie. if you're not white, you're not as good)?
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Answers
Some people exist to get offended. Presumably all the contestants had to go through rounds before getting on the show, they all seem to be competant bakers. It's nice seeing different ingredients and flavourings being used in British favourites, that's what comes with the diversity.
19:46 Thu 06th Aug 2015
sp1814 - //andy_hughes
I have to concur with AOG here.
I bet your interest in food would increase exponentially, if you were refused access to it for a week! //
Perhaps I should explain further -
of course I get hungry, and I feel satisfied when I have eaten, but what I eat is of little consequence. I could rotate the same three basic meals for the rest of my life, and not worry about it. When I was away in Montreal, I ate the same meal for breakfast, and then another same meal in the evening, no variation, for ten days. I would have cheerfully done that for the next ten years.
I do not anticipate meals, or salivate over them when they arrive - quite the opposite.
My life consists of trying to find the plainest food I can wherever I go - can you do that without sauce, can you miss this out and that out, can you cook it without the spice / marinade and so on and so on.
So beans on toast every day for six months would not phase me at all - and I eat because I need to.
The only meal I really do enjoy, in the way that everyone else does, is bacon and egg, which I do really like, as long as the bacon is smoked and cremated - otherwise, it's not as good.
Hope that clears up my perceptions - and the reason why I don't watch GBB, or similar programmes.
I know I am the odd one out - and everyone else enjoys food and cookery progs, hence their popularity - just not for me.
I have to concur with AOG here.
I bet your interest in food would increase exponentially, if you were refused access to it for a week! //
Perhaps I should explain further -
of course I get hungry, and I feel satisfied when I have eaten, but what I eat is of little consequence. I could rotate the same three basic meals for the rest of my life, and not worry about it. When I was away in Montreal, I ate the same meal for breakfast, and then another same meal in the evening, no variation, for ten days. I would have cheerfully done that for the next ten years.
I do not anticipate meals, or salivate over them when they arrive - quite the opposite.
My life consists of trying to find the plainest food I can wherever I go - can you do that without sauce, can you miss this out and that out, can you cook it without the spice / marinade and so on and so on.
So beans on toast every day for six months would not phase me at all - and I eat because I need to.
The only meal I really do enjoy, in the way that everyone else does, is bacon and egg, which I do really like, as long as the bacon is smoked and cremated - otherwise, it's not as good.
Hope that clears up my perceptions - and the reason why I don't watch GBB, or similar programmes.
I know I am the odd one out - and everyone else enjoys food and cookery progs, hence their popularity - just not for me.
sp1814 - //"Is it me, or is Quentin Letts a git?" //
I think Mr Letts is very good at pandering to his market, which as a columnist is what he aims for - and he clearly succeeds.
All has done here is to deliberately over-think and over-analyse the situation and see something that is clearly not there, and then write about it.
I think Mr Letts is very good at pandering to his market, which as a columnist is what he aims for - and he clearly succeeds.
All has done here is to deliberately over-think and over-analyse the situation and see something that is clearly not there, and then write about it.
@sp1814
//If this is evidence of the BBC 'box ticking', what is the answer? Should competitions such as these be open only to those who can prove their Britishness going back ten generations? //
No one is suggesting that. The question is whether the statistical likelihood of competitive heats, to select the final twelve, producing such an exact "representing all viewer groups we seek" mix of finalists is within the realms of possibility or if the selection process was a complete fabrication, culminating with a producer lead 'team pick' procedure.
If there were, in fact, thousands who attended regional auditions, then their time, effort, ingredients and transportation costs were incurred for nothing.
Time for a rousing chorus of fiiiiiiiiixxxxxxx!!!
Job discrimination is where the ethnic mix of successful recruits does not reflect the ethnic mix of the job applicants.
Letts:
"Were these new contestants chosen on merit? Were they representative of the humdrum, plain-as-white-flour, Middle-English bumblers whom I bet comprised the majority of the thousands of applicants who tried to get onto the show?
Or were they chosen because they fitted some Twitter-influenced metropolitan wishlist, because they satisfied the demands of gender/ethnic/sexual/class balance, and because their ‘back stories’ might give the BBC promotions department a chance to whip up some publicity?"
So, Letts is arguing that the mix of applicants to the show should be reflected in the end product. To which I would add that, nationally averaged, this would lead to the ubiquitous "1 in 12" syndrome again - likely spawning accusations of "token ethnic person".
If they held regional contests then you would expect four or five major urban centres to stand a chance of producing a winner each from out of their minorities populations because the proportions there are _not_ 1 in 12. I don't think he's made allowances for regional finals where big cities might dominate in terms of competitor quality.
It's the same principle as the Olympics: bigger national population = wider talent pool = higher competitive standards = more medals.
//If this is evidence of the BBC 'box ticking', what is the answer? Should competitions such as these be open only to those who can prove their Britishness going back ten generations? //
No one is suggesting that. The question is whether the statistical likelihood of competitive heats, to select the final twelve, producing such an exact "representing all viewer groups we seek" mix of finalists is within the realms of possibility or if the selection process was a complete fabrication, culminating with a producer lead 'team pick' procedure.
If there were, in fact, thousands who attended regional auditions, then their time, effort, ingredients and transportation costs were incurred for nothing.
Time for a rousing chorus of fiiiiiiiiixxxxxxx!!!
Job discrimination is where the ethnic mix of successful recruits does not reflect the ethnic mix of the job applicants.
Letts:
"Were these new contestants chosen on merit? Were they representative of the humdrum, plain-as-white-flour, Middle-English bumblers whom I bet comprised the majority of the thousands of applicants who tried to get onto the show?
Or were they chosen because they fitted some Twitter-influenced metropolitan wishlist, because they satisfied the demands of gender/ethnic/sexual/class balance, and because their ‘back stories’ might give the BBC promotions department a chance to whip up some publicity?"
So, Letts is arguing that the mix of applicants to the show should be reflected in the end product. To which I would add that, nationally averaged, this would lead to the ubiquitous "1 in 12" syndrome again - likely spawning accusations of "token ethnic person".
If they held regional contests then you would expect four or five major urban centres to stand a chance of producing a winner each from out of their minorities populations because the proportions there are _not_ 1 in 12. I don't think he's made allowances for regional finals where big cities might dominate in terms of competitor quality.
It's the same principle as the Olympics: bigger national population = wider talent pool = higher competitive standards = more medals.
@sp1814
per your 10:24 re my misunderstanding you:-
Your OP had this
//And does this suggest that those on the political right secretly believe that if you have brown skin, any success you may have is nothing to do with your skills or qualities, but because of preferential treatment (ie. if you're not white, you're not as good)? //
From reading what people say when they whine about affirmative action, this is the general sense I get. However, I think they ate referring to the specific individuals moved into their elevated positions, from a lower echelon.
Scenario:
A company has a mix of job grades and a mix of ethnicities. The lower/lowest grades either have a "correct" (proportional to local population) or even an excessive representation of minorities because their progress up the ladder has (historically) been blocked by their attainment in paper qualifications.
But the pattern is changing and the younger ones have the required qualifications to progress up the ladder but aren't being allowed to progress because the bosses still treat the entire minority as a 'lump', with a presumed ability limit.
In comes affirmative action. If implemeted badly, candidates are plucked from **within the company's pool of existing employees** and slotted into jobs in order to meet some numerical quota and with careless disregard to their skillset. If you slot the shy maths whizz into the job which requires "people skills" and the "people person" into the accountancy department and so on, then they end up underperforming. As individuals they may end up discredited and go down with stress. To keep the numbers right, install another one. The entire action plan is gradually discredited as a quotas game, as aprocryphal cases circulate and, in time, nobody trusts it any more.
All the while, the abovementioned younger generation, with the right qualifications are still trapped in the low-grade job, overlooked because they are not time-served ("promotion queue" system) and their skillset is not growing because their job is not stretching their abilities or allowing them to show talent spotter management types what they can do.
If we were not a diverse society and the employer was 100% one ethnicity, all this internal competition would still be present so introducing a special short-cut for minority groups is going to be resented in some quarters.
Accusing those, specially selected for advancement, of being less talented is sour grapes, on the face of it but, if it was a genuine case of the lowly filing clerk being promoted to a level or two above your pay grade, you might be justified in that sourness, as would your fellow team members. If it was an external recruit, most would probably accept that the applicant met the skills criteria and helping to fill the "quota" was merely incidental.
Anyway, all this exposition is by way of saying that accusing an individual of being less talented may be rather harking back to this over-arching image of (bad implementations of) affirmative action rather than objective assessments of that individual's *actual* abilities.
Again, this is treating an ethnic person as part of a "lump", with certain attributes, which is at the heart of what discrimination is rooted in.
I think part of the problem is how "up ourselves" we are. You assess a stranger and ask yourself "does this person have the talents I want for this role?", which you then answer by testing against "are they like me?" - because we all regard ourselves as talented, right? Any perceptible differences in appearance, or manners should be handled as signifiers of "different" but some make the erroneous leap of logic from that to "not like me, therefore not talented".
per your 10:24 re my misunderstanding you:-
Your OP had this
//And does this suggest that those on the political right secretly believe that if you have brown skin, any success you may have is nothing to do with your skills or qualities, but because of preferential treatment (ie. if you're not white, you're not as good)? //
From reading what people say when they whine about affirmative action, this is the general sense I get. However, I think they ate referring to the specific individuals moved into their elevated positions, from a lower echelon.
Scenario:
A company has a mix of job grades and a mix of ethnicities. The lower/lowest grades either have a "correct" (proportional to local population) or even an excessive representation of minorities because their progress up the ladder has (historically) been blocked by their attainment in paper qualifications.
But the pattern is changing and the younger ones have the required qualifications to progress up the ladder but aren't being allowed to progress because the bosses still treat the entire minority as a 'lump', with a presumed ability limit.
In comes affirmative action. If implemeted badly, candidates are plucked from **within the company's pool of existing employees** and slotted into jobs in order to meet some numerical quota and with careless disregard to their skillset. If you slot the shy maths whizz into the job which requires "people skills" and the "people person" into the accountancy department and so on, then they end up underperforming. As individuals they may end up discredited and go down with stress. To keep the numbers right, install another one. The entire action plan is gradually discredited as a quotas game, as aprocryphal cases circulate and, in time, nobody trusts it any more.
All the while, the abovementioned younger generation, with the right qualifications are still trapped in the low-grade job, overlooked because they are not time-served ("promotion queue" system) and their skillset is not growing because their job is not stretching their abilities or allowing them to show talent spotter management types what they can do.
If we were not a diverse society and the employer was 100% one ethnicity, all this internal competition would still be present so introducing a special short-cut for minority groups is going to be resented in some quarters.
Accusing those, specially selected for advancement, of being less talented is sour grapes, on the face of it but, if it was a genuine case of the lowly filing clerk being promoted to a level or two above your pay grade, you might be justified in that sourness, as would your fellow team members. If it was an external recruit, most would probably accept that the applicant met the skills criteria and helping to fill the "quota" was merely incidental.
Anyway, all this exposition is by way of saying that accusing an individual of being less talented may be rather harking back to this over-arching image of (bad implementations of) affirmative action rather than objective assessments of that individual's *actual* abilities.
Again, this is treating an ethnic person as part of a "lump", with certain attributes, which is at the heart of what discrimination is rooted in.
I think part of the problem is how "up ourselves" we are. You assess a stranger and ask yourself "does this person have the talents I want for this role?", which you then answer by testing against "are they like me?" - because we all regard ourselves as talented, right? Any perceptible differences in appearance, or manners should be handled as signifiers of "different" but some make the erroneous leap of logic from that to "not like me, therefore not talented".
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