Bowing to Racist Pressure

Last year, I took exception to a “Black Lives Matter Statement” signed by the Chief Executive, the President and the Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society, which was published in the July 2020 edition of Aerospace, that learned Society magazine.

The Society had used the death of George Floyd in America to make its own statement “about racism and injustice towards black people.”  Incontrovertibly, the Society stated, “we will not tolerate racism, social injustice, or inequality.”

However, at the same time, Society appeared to admit to “hidden institutional or systemic bias across our wider networks” which, on the face of it seemed imply that the Membership were complicit.  I urged the Society to publish examples and evidence of these injustices, specifically, so that members may do what they can individually by way of remedy.  Otherwise, it seemed to me, that all Members and Fellows were pleading guilty to racism and injustice by their association with the Society.

I did not receive a satisfactory answer to my letter although the Society, patronisingly, recommended their diversity training programme to cure my ills.  I do not know what motivated the RAeS to assume an automatic posture of contrition but it was particularly disappointing that, “in seeking to promote the highest professional standards and provide a central forum for sharing knowledge,” I felt that the Society’s response to the Floyd affair, if one had even been necessary, had simply been a band-stand of fashionable slogans.

On the same subject, the online abuse suffered by some members of the England football team has been, rightly condemned and, I understand, all of four alleged culprits have been charged.  But, amidst the barrage of self-righteousness and before we admit that our country is irredeemably doomed, could somebody please tell me where else in the world there is generally more tolerance to minorities than in the UK?