Job of the Week: White people need not apply

Job of the Week: White people need not apply

News

norman lebrecht

November 01, 2024

London’s state-funded South Bank Centre is seeking a Director of Communications.

Ethnic minorities only.

People with hearing difficulties are preferred.

From the SBC website:

We are looking for an experienced Director of Communications to lead Southbank Centre’s communications strategy, elevating our profile, and advocating for our mission to a wide range of audiences and stakeholders….

This is a very exciting time to join the Communications team as the Southbank Centre is approaching its 75th Anniversary in 2026, and we are looking for someone that will help shape and share our story through a new and engaging communications strategy.

We welcome applications from people from a Black, Asian or Ethnically Diverse background or those who are D/deaf or disabled. If you wish to discuss reasonable adjustments such as a BSL interpreter for your interview please indicate this on your application form. Interviews will take place at The Southbank Centre. If you would like to speak to someone about any adjustments or concerns you can also email hrteam@southbankcentre.co.uk and we will be in touch with you to make the necessary arrangements.

By attracting people to work for us from a broad range of backgrounds with diverse attitudes, opinions and beliefs we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things. 

Comments

  • Rachel says:

    Where does it say ethnic minorities only?

  • WU says:

    The objectively most suitable person should get the position, no matter who or what they are. Everything else is discrimination. And supports the right-wing arguments.

    • Pianofortissimo says:

      Even in radical, self-injurious Sweden this annoncement would be against the law.

      • V.Lind says:

        I think the gist of it would be against the law in Canada, too, but the current occupant of the Communications office has seen to it that the wording does not actually breach the law. As Rachel notes above, it does not specify minorities only.

        The intention, however, is clear, and indeed I would think applications from able-bodied whites would get very short shrift.

  • Anon says:

    The BBC has the same criteria. No whites.
    It’s discriminatory.

    • John Borstlap says:

      To battle racist discrimination effectively, white healthy people are excluded.

      It has a Monty-Pythonesque quality.

    • Maria says:

      Where does it say no whites? It says: if you are from a diverse background, be aware that you are welcome.

      • Tiredofitall says:

        A legal note of inclusion should be present in this type of announcement, as a disclaimer, but certainly not in the description or announcement of the actual position.

        To do so implies a stacked deck from the outset. Unless, of course, they intend to say the quiet part out lout.

      • sabrinensis says:

        I don’t think anyone needs special invitations.

      • John Borstlap says:

        ‘Diverse’ is, in practice, always understood als ‘non-white people suffering from exclusion by white privilege’. And Chinese or Indian or Pakistani varieties are not thought of.

      • Bone says:

        The categories of applicants specify certain races; simple deduction leads a rational person to conclude that excluded races are not welcome.

  • Monopoliser says:

    Oh dear – looks like Norman has the wrong end of the stick on this… The line that starts “We welcome applications….” is seen in almost all job advertisements nowadays, often to fulfil an internal DEI policy. I appreciate the wording isn’t quite so clear, but this interpretation is pretty facetious.

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    A very deplorable state of things. What use for a director of communications? Out with them all, and other do-nothings, and raise the musicians salaries and technical staff instead.

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    The “or” indicates that whites with a specific and “approved” disability are also eligible.

    • John Borstlap says:

      My PA, bogged down by the burden of strict spelling requirements, and looking for another job, asked me whether spelling dislexia is a disability. Checking the Handbook of Reparatory Positive Discrimination revealed it is only a disability in persons of diverse background, and she is blond. Now she is hectically searching the net for other possibilities which means I have to type this comment myself.

      • V.Lind says:

        I wonder if she can spell “dyslexia.”

        And the inability to spell properly, which may be an aspect of dyslexia but is widespread among those untroubled by the problem, does not appear to be a handicap to editors, writers or anyone else involved in the publication of anything from blogs to books. Or indeed to teachers, who are turning out “graduates” unable to form a basic English plural correctly.

        • John Borstlap says:

          In fact it’s a plural of dyslexium, I read today, but a dyslexium is only referring to one speling mistake at a time. It’s not enough to get registered, I fear.

          Sally

        • Paul Brownsey says:

          “teachers, who are turning out “graduates” unable to form a basic English plural correctly.”

          Please explain.

          • John Borstlap says:

            Should ‘plural’ not be ‘plurals’ I wonder.

            Things that often keep me awake at night.

            Sally

        • Anthony Sayer says:

          @V. Lind: When you can speak Dutch as well as John speaks English, I think you might be qualified to criticise.

        • कोल्हापुरी हुप्प्या says:

          [I wonder if she can spell “dyslexia”.]

          No great credit to her if she can. English spelling is stupid, like the people who fetishize it.

  • Herbie G says:

    “By attracting people to work for us from a broad range of backgrounds with diverse attitudes, opinions and beliefs we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things.”

    What happens if the old, tried and tested ways worked perfectly? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One Stenning is more than enough for the UK.

    • guest1847 says:

      If it were working perfectly, how do you explain the 65% decrease in concert attendance in the US over the past 40 years

      https://www.cultureforhire.com/blog/sppa

      • justsaying says:

        One explanation, specific to the U.S.

        a) in the period 1968-70, when tense negotiations between University administrators and student protestors (against the draft and the Vietnam war generally) were on everyone’s mind, an easy concession to the students was to transfer control of the budget for visiting concert artists from the administration to student government. Folk and rock quickly displaced classical dates. Columbia Artists’ venerable Community Concerts bureau was shuttered soon after, having lost a huge proportion of its bedrock clientele. Even more significantly,

        b) in response to the funding crisis centered around the OPEC embargo of circa 1973, public schools rapidly economized by downsizing or eliminating band and choir programs in most of the country–especially those that had served the primary grades. They have not bounced back in most places.

        The people going to high school around 1973 would have been expected to have kids out of the house and careers well-established sometime in the environ of 2003. That’s when concertgoing should (or would have) start to pick up. Brace for worse: they reached retirement age, which is the absolute prime time for both attendance and philanthropy, sometime near 2020.

        Would a diversity initiative at their local symphony perhaps draw some of them in? Next question: Do they even know there IS a local symphony? Next question: by the time their own children reach that age, will there be one?

        • guest1847 says:

          I found a paper written in 2001:
          “New York City’s non-Hispanic white population
          (which includes the population which is mostly
          from European backgrounds) actually declined by 12 per cent from 1990 to 2000 (Sachs, 2001). In the 2000 census, the African American population in New York City is recorded as at 24 per cent of the population, the Hispanic population at 27 percent and the Asian at 10 per cent. In 1950 the ‘white’ population of New York City was 91 percent; it is now 35 per cent and is, therefore, in the minority.”
          As you know minorities don’t often go to the concert hall because of how concerts are presented – there isn’t audience participation common in other genres for example

    • John Borstlap says:

      It’s the modernist obsession to get rid of the past in any form, under the delusion that anything new is THEREFORE better than anything that exists already, entirely independent from context or quality or effectiveness. The reason of this is scientific progress, which is then projected on any other field. It is a case of mass neurosis.

      • Peter San Diego says:

        I’d generalize the observation to say that it’s an either-or virus that infects much thinking these days. Many modernists want nothing but the new; many traditionalists want nothing but the tried-and-true. And painting with excessively broad brushes is epidemic.

  • John Borstlap says:

    The understandable urge to correct injustices from the past leads to the wish to balance-out discrimination with opposite discrimination, with the result that injustice in the past is repeated in the present, only into the other direction.
    This is perfectly logical, but overlooks the fact that the victims if this moral correction have not the slightest responsibility for injustice committed in the past by people they have no other connection with apart from ‘race’.
    So, the injustice is simply be reproduced – unknowingly, and is again a form of racism. And the new victims look at the world in a flabbergasted state – they have to pay for something they have not done.

  • Dihn says:

    Any wonder why US UK and AU are global laughing stocks?

  • Wannaplayguitar says:

    If a high brow cultural palace like the Southbank has an unabashedly 60+ yr history of programming mostly aspirant white-centric entertainment, then it surely makes sense to occasionally shift the narrow focus appeal and loudly (yes very loudly because people are shy) welcome the cautious and culturally reticent audiences to cross the thresholds of these hallowed temples.

    • John Borstlap says:

      People from cultural backgrounds where ‘classical music’ is a non-existent quantity, from whatever ethnicity, need information and some education, so that they are informed that there is something they might like very much if only they knew about it. The step from not knowing anything whatsoever to buying a ticket and taking place in a concert hall seat, is much too big.

      • GuestX says:

        So how would you suggest the information might be communicated to these people? Just possibly from the Communications office of a major arts centre situated on London’s south bank, and it would be no harm if the Director of Communications was from the same background as them but had had the educational opportunities many of them have not had.
        I’m sure you know that the Southbank Centre is for all the arts, not only for classical musicians.

  • Dargomyzhsky says:

    Jolly sensible, if you ask me.

  • ArsMusica says:

    To quote the great Thomas Sowell:

    “You can never solve past injustices by creating modern day injustices as the remedy. It only creates more injustice.”

  • Mark says:

    Tempted to bet a substantial sum of money that the successful candidate will be white, probably male.

  • Mark Mortimer says:

    You’re joking right?

  • Karden says:

    Maria: “Where does it say no whites? It says: if you are from a diverse background, be aware that you are welcome.”
    ———
    Actually, it was admittedly ambiguous enough that it didn’t include something more definitive such as, “Non-white liberals only.” Or, “Non-heterosexual progressives only.” Or “Female leftists only.”

  • Davis says:

    How is this job advertisement different than, say, a sign that reads “wheelchair accessible”, or any advertisement that offers reasonable accommodations to people whose differences put them in the minority. Clearly the ad’ is hoping to attract people from “a broad range of backgrounds”, just as surtitles above the opera stage attract persons whose language is not being sung in a particular performance. What is abundantly clear is that Mr. Lebrecht is a “pot stirrer” intending to attract comments from the likes of Mr. Borstlap and his ilk. Maybe the ad’ revenue made from such a title will buy you something shiny. Good luck.

  • Ellianna says:

    FFS this is just standard recruitment phraseology, it is on literally any job advert I ever look at. It’s just making a point of trying to attract applicants who are currently under-represented in the workforce. The V&A put this phrase on about men recently!

    We have this is my organisation. Diversity is part of ACE reporting so we have to be able to show we are making a decent effort to attract diverse applicants and recruit fairly. You’ll be shocked to hear this boiler plate doesn’t really make any difference and we still mainly recruit a bunch of white women, because they’re the ones that apply.

    • Paul Brownsey says:

      If it is “standard rectuiitment phraseology”, then those putting out the notices need to rethink their phraseology in order to avoid the sort of ambiguity that has generated the present discussion on this board, since the notice can be read *both* as indicating that people who are not disabled, BAME, or whatever, are not welcome and won’t get the job *and* as asserting that the aim is merely to encourage people in these minorities, who hitherto seem to have steered away from such jobs, to consider whether the job might be for them, without any promise that one of them will get it.

    • Anthony Sayer says:

      Seeing as the only people who apply will be those who read the advert, why further patronise ‘minorities’ by saying ‘you can apply, too?’.

  • Shura says:

    Pardon?

  • Ernest says:

    Why can’t the Southbank HR write in plain English – We welcome applications from all.

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