{"id":336,"date":"2016-07-06T09:40:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T09:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/?p=336"},"modified":"2016-07-07T11:28:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T11:28:35","slug":"equality-vs-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/equality-vs-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"equality vs Equity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Which
Simplistic, perhaps, but it makes a good point<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0This picture shows why I argue for positive discrimination, as a casting policy the actor’s union Equity should be supporting\u00a0– to redress the balance that everyone now accepts\u00a0is true and has spawned Act For Change<\/a> and Lenny Henry’s recent pronouncements <\/a>etc. \u00a0\u00a0But even better, it shows why those who are threatened by positive discrimination, ie those who are privileged and already see over the fence (in the case of actors, those white actors with a certain agent), always argue that positive discrimination isn’t true equality and therefore illegal. \u00a0It may well be\u00a0illegal, but that doesn’t mean an\u00a0actors’ trade\u00a0union can’t stand for it in principle, as it\u00a0could\u00a0have done (but didn’t) when homosexuality was illegal.<\/p>\n

I believe that Equity the union, by not promoting what they would call “positive discrimination for minorities”, is not doing its job nor serving its name honorably. \u00a0I believe this happens because the union is 98% white (or whatever stupidly high\u00a0number it is) and the elected Council is 100% white. \u00a0Unless BAME members are elected to the Council this argument will never\u00a0be made. Even if they are, it still isn’t certain to be made. \u00a0At the moment I have made it a few times in committee meetings and it has never even been listened to at Council level.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was\u00a0incredulous\u00a0to read a Diversity Objectives memo from the BBC – dated\u00a0the year 2000 – at a meeting yesterday , and we all realised the situation has not changed\u00a0one iota in half a generation. \u00a0In the last 16 years, \u00a0Equity has done almost\u00a0nothing to drive change in this area. \u00a0I think it\u00a0should take a long hard look at itself and make sure that come\u00a02032 it\u00a0can look back with pride at how it\u00a0helped manage to change the landscape. \u00a0This can only happen by listening to and adopting some new ideas – then leading the way, not retroactively following the crowd.<\/p>\n

It is like the recent Iraq bombings getting little to no coverage in the press; no-one in the key positions in journalism at the moment prioritise this story, because they have post Brexit, Chilcot Inquiry and football (and tennis!) to report on. \u00a0 But no one would deny it\u00a0is massive story! \u00a0In this example at least it is getting reported, thanks to having a person\u00a0in a senior position like Jeremy Bowen. \u00a0Equity doesn’t have this person. Unless someone of high status whose main issue is BAME representation is there making the arguments, then no one thinks to make them. \u00a0 In the same way as people\u00a0forget to make arguments for disabled and LGBT and all minorities – unless a specific representative is in the room.<\/p>\n

Equity believes\u00a0it has shielded itself from criticism in this regard by having a protected seat for a BAME Councillor – but the facts speak for themselves, no such argument has ever been made, Equity’s history on acting for ethnic\u00a0minorities is embarrassingly bad (the current leaflet doing the rounds listing Equity’s\u00a0achievement s in this area is false –\u00a0a wholly fictionalised re-writing of what stands\u00a0Equity took;\u00a0\u00a0for instance on the\u00a0Miss Saigon episode) and the current setup is simply not good enough to redress the imbalance, which in turn means Equity is not leading the way.<\/p>\n

Polls for the new Equity \u00a0Council elections closed \u00a0last night and results will be forthcoming soon. \u00a0I hope BAME members took my advice in the previous post and voted (in most cases for the first time ever) for BAME reps on Council. My own private interactions with actors\u00a0tells me that more BAME actors than ever are leaving the union and even less are inclined to join.<\/p>\n

If I am elected, which I doubt given my absence from the preferred “list”, \u00a0I will argue again
\nfor positive discrimination. \u00a0Even though it\u00a0may be illegal technically, I do not understand why the Union would not campaign for targets that amount to the same thing, which are not legally binding, but exactly as Sky have set themselves, for example.<\/p>\n

Equity the union does not seem very equitable. \u00a0The new President, whoever it turns out to be, could do a lot worse than\u00a0to face\u00a0this\u00a0issue and make Equity for the first time pro-active in this area.<\/p>\n

ps. \u00a0a friend of mine, who brought this meme to my attention, points out that politically, people have\u00a0different ideas of what is fair, and your ideas on fairness are, more or less, the determining factor in what makes you right or left wing. \u00a0\u00a0Some may even point out\u00a0the meme\u00a0overlooks the idea that the people in question have not paid for the spectacle\u00a0they are watching, which may not be ideal as a meme for actors’ politics!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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UPDATE! \u00a0The results are in and it appears that me and my colleagues on the MEM committee, Daniel York and Somi\u00a0de Souza did not get enough votes to get on to the general Council seats –\u00a0but three other BAME actors did!<\/a> \u00a0Congratulations to them!\u00a0\u00a0Equity’s Council has gone from 3% BAME including the protected seat to 12%, which is far more representative – which alone\u00a0was what I was campaigning for anyway!<\/p>\n

A big thank you to\u00a0the 600+ that did vote for me.<\/p>\n

A poor turn out (as usual)\u00a0from Equity’s 40,000+ members meant that the President was elected with only 2,300 votes! \u00a0That is 5.5% of the membership! \u00a0And some people have the gall to argue\u00a0that the\u00a0Tories do not have a democratic mandate!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 This picture shows why I argue for positive discrimination, as a casting policy the actor’s union Equity should be supporting – to redress the balance that everyone now accepts is true and has spawned Act For Change and Lenny Henry’s recent pronouncements etc.   But even better, it shows why those who are threatened by positive discrimination, ie … Continue reading equality vs Equity<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chineseelvis.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}