Am I a "liberal"?

[Tiberius]

I dont undrstand your quote about 5.27% of the population being White ( other ). You don't mention blacks or other non-whites.

I didn't see the need to mention blacks or other non-whites. By simple addition, you can see that almost 91% of the population of the UK (according to the 2001 census) is white. Thus 9% is "non-white", and I said that give this statistic, I would expect the police to have a "very small" percentage of non-whites in their employ.

I don't have the statistics to hand but WE ARE MULTICULTURAL and yet the police force, a very important part of our society, is almost exclusively white.If you don't see that as cause for concern, I despair.

Yet I do have the statistics, I gave them to you in my response above. You only need to search "demographics of the UK" in Google to find them. Here is a wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_...#Ethnicity

The statistics say that almost 91% of the population is white, making the UK a predominantly non-multicultural society. We might have aspirations of being one, but that is completely different. The police force is almost exclusively white, but you would not expect anything different from a society that has a 91% white population. There are many black people in the police, but even if there were none at all, it wouldn't be a cause for concern unless you could show that the police force were purposefully not hiring black people. There could be many other factors that indicate why black people weren't joining, but the fact remains that in this society, there are black coppers.

As to why there aren't more non-white police, that is an interesting question. Could it just be that non-whites are not welcomed by plod?

According to a 2003 study, 2.92% of the police force are of an "ethnic minority". Why this figure is a third of the population's demographics is a question that should be asked, but to jump immediately to the conclusion that "the police are being discriminating" is absurd. If it were so, the question should be "why are there not 0.002% blacks in the police force?". 1.5% of the highest ranks are of an ethnic minority. Do you really think they would be there if there was job discrimination?

I am not suggesting a " shambles of people " of different cultures should be enabled to join..do you have such a low opinion of other ethnic cultures that you say suh a thing?

No, but what you are suggesting (and correct me if I am wrong) is that we should be actively seeking out and hiring people of ethnic minorities just because they are ethnic minorities. If you did that, you'd get shambles of people who are simply not good enough for police work, but who were hired over the rest because of their skin colour. As Kyu has said, affirmative action is racism.

Are you suggesting there are not perfectly suitable candidates out there, who could be encouraged into the force?

There are, and they should be encouraged. However the police should hire the people who are best qualified, not the people who they have low demographics on. I would prefer to see a well trained all-white police force than one made up of a shambles of unqualified black people who are there to fill up a demographic checkbox.

If you think that is racist, here is my other view. I would prefer to see a well trained black police force than one made up of a shambles of unqualified white people too!

I don't give two fucks about the colour of a person's skin. I care about providing a good service to the community, made up of the best people for the job. If the best people happen to be white, so be it. If they happen to be black, so be it!