This post, authored bySophie Corcoran, was republished with permission fromThe Daily Sceptic
Over the past week, there has beensignificant media attentionsurrounding my legal action against the 10,000 Interns Foundation and the Bar Council.
For those unfamiliar with the case, it concerns a legal internship scheme connected to the Bar Council which offered paid work experience at the London Living Wage but explicitly restricted eligibility to applicants from certain ethnic minority backgrounds, excluding white applicants from applying entirely.
As someone with a genuine desire to pursue a career in law, I applied for opportunities to gain experience within the profession and remain actively interested in securing internships and work experience in the legal field. My legal action challenges whether this kind of racial exclusion is compatible with Britain’s equality laws.
Much of the commentary has attempted tocaricatureor dismiss the case before it has even been heard. Rather than engage seriously with the legal and moral principles involved, critics have chosen instead to attack my motives, mypoliticsand even my character. This case is not about “culture wars”. It is about whether equality law in Britain applies equally to everyone.
The central issue is simple: should organisations operating in Britain be permitted to deny opportunities to people purely because they are white? I believe the answer must be no. Some have argued that this discrimination is justified under the banner of “positive action”. But there is an important distinction between encouraging underrepresented groups to apply and outright excluding others from opportunities on racial grounds. One promotes fairness and outreach; the other creates racial barriers. Britain should not move towards a system where access to jobs, internships or professional opportunities depends on skin colour.
The Equality Act was never intended to create a hierarchy of races where some groups are protected from discrimination while others are expected to tolerate it, but this is exactly what these schemes do. Equality law only works if it is universal. What makes many of these schemes particularly flawed is that they often ignore every other form of disadvantage in life. A wealthy privately educated applicant from an affluent background can qualify for some race-based schemes, while a working-class white applicant from a struggling town cannot. That is not social justice. It is an ideological view of disadvantage that reduces people entirely to race. The assumption underpinning many of these programmes appears to be that disadvantage can only meaningfully exist if you belong to certain ethnic groups. But reality is far more complicated than that.
White working-class pupils have been the lowest attaining major ethnic group at GCSE level for more than a decade. Yet there are internship schemes like this, and many others, that specifically exclude white applicants because they are supposedly ‘privileged’. That is plainly wrong. Just because someone is black does not automatically mean he or she is disadvantaged. Equally, just because someone is white does not mean he or she is not disadvantaged. I know that personally. I grew up with epilepsy, hearing difficulties and dyslexia. I attended a failing state school and did not have the smoothest educational journey. Barristers with disabilities are themselves severely underrepresented within the profession. Yet none of that mattered in the context of these schemes, because I am white.
Despite everything that has been written about me, my desire to explore a career in law is entirely genuine. I remain deeply interested in the legal profession and I am still actively seeking internship opportunities to gain experience and build a future within the field. That is why this debate matters. This is not about denying opportunities to anybody else. It is about defending a universal principle: that individuals should be judged on their own circumstances, talents and experiences, not treated primarily as representatives of racial groups.
Ironically, many of the people defending these schemes claim to oppose discrimination. Yet they end up defending discrimination when it aligns with their political worldview. They insist equality sometimes requires unequal treatment in pursuit of preferred outcomes. I reject that entirely. A fair society should seek to widen opportunity based on genuine disadvantage, poverty, disability, educational barriers, family circumstances, geography, not racial essentialism. If we continue down the current path, we risk creating a society where race becomes increasingly central to who receives opportunities and who does not. That is not progress. It is division. Equality must mean equal treatment for everybody, or it means nothing at all.
Source: modernity
