Race, class and higher education | thearticle

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, more than half a million young people have said goodbye to their parents and set off for a new life at university. We have some of the best universities in the

world, and they attract students from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. Yet there is one ethnic group you are unlikely to see: white working-class British boys. According to figures from

the Department for Education, white working-class boys are the group least likely to attend a UK university. Just 13 per cent of this group will go. When it comes to our elite universities,

the figures are even more startling. White working-class males make up just two per cent of the intake at Cambridge while at Oxford it is just three per cent. White working-class children

are falling behind. What has gone wrong? At first glance it would appear obvious. In GCSE data, of those eligible for free school meals (the indicator of low socio-economic status) just 17.2

per cent of white British pupils achieved a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in Maths and English. Yet poor Chinese students were over three times as likely to achieve that grade and 75 per

cent more likely to attend university. When it comes to the Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, some students do better than others. Black African British pupils do better

academically than white pupils, whereas black Caribbean children tend to do worse. Yet, more than any other demographic, poor white boys are the group least likely to attend higher

education. It must be noted that this is not simply reducible to race. Within the world of statistics and reporting, these disparities and inequities are often attributed to discrimination.

This is something the conservative economist Thomas Sowell calls the “invincible fallacy”. As Sowell has argued in his book _Discrimination and Disparities_, a plethora of variables,

including ambition, work-ethic and culture are more often to blame. What we have is a cultural issue, not one of race. But, in the era of Black Lives Matter, more and more emphasis has been

placed upon race and the supposed inherent institutional racial injustice that confronts the BAME community. The rapper Stormzy started providing scholarships for black students at Cambridge

in 2018. Through a donation of more than half a million pounds, the grime artist funds two poor black students a year at the elite university. Through a scholarship scheme called Black

Academic Futures, Oxford University will now fund ten new scholarships exclusively for black students. Yet when a similar attempt was made to help poor white working-class boys, the reaction

was very different. The philanthropist Sir Bryan Thwaites offered some of the most elite private schools a £1 million bursary to help disadvantaged white boys to achieve their full

potential. His offer was turned down by every public school he approached. The reason? They did not want to put an ethnic restriction on those who may potentially benefit. One detractor went

so far as to describe Thwaites’s offer as “obnoxious.” What these examples show is how our educational institutions have been captured and subverted by identity politics. One need only look

at how this divisive ideology has permeated other institutions. The BBC has enforced diversity targets stipulating that twenty per cent of roles within the corporation must come from

under-represented BAME groups. See also how our politicians are being re-educated through diversity training lectures. Is that it is wrong and divisive to categorise all white groups as

equally privileged, just as it is wrong to treat all BAME people the same. Attempting to equalise outcomes based on race is not only illiberal, but it is also dangerous and divisive. The

obsession with promoting race at the expense of class is a salient feature of modern day 21st century identitarianism. Previous generations of progressives realised that a shared culture was

more important than something as trivial as skin colour. Their goal was to improve the lives of all working class people. When it comes to progressive politics, white males sit at the

bottom of the intersectional ocean, forever chastised as exhibiting “toxic masculinity” and “white privilege”. This ignores the truth, which is that class has always been the determining

factor.