Excerpt from The New Empire Within Britain

original site

by Salman Rushdie

"One of the SDP's better'known candidates told me recently that while he found the idea of working-class racism easy to accept, the parallel notion of widespread prejudice in the middle classes was unconvincing to him. Yet, after many years of voluntray work in this field, I know that the management levels of British industry and business are just as shot through by the threads of prejudice as are many unions. It is believed for instance, that as many as fifty per cent of all telephone calls made by employers to employment agencies specify no blacks. Black unemployment is much, much higher than white; and such anomalies don't arise by accident."

...employment...

This passage discusses a British candidate who could not believe that racism was widespread among all
the classes. Rushdie argues that through his own experience in the employment field, he believes that
employers purposefully restrain from hiring black people leading to the disproportionately high black
unemployment. The white British employers do not want to hire black people partly because they believe
that it would be counterproductive. Rushdie exemplified this belief when he said that a director refused to
hire a black boy to be in a commercial. This hiring practice displays the beliefs of white British society;
they believe that they are superior to black people. As a result, black Britains live in poorer living
standards. The jobs that they do get are mostly hard labor. This keeps them at the bottom of the social
ladder, handicapping them from attaining the means to become influential with the public. Linton Kwesi
Johnson expresses the consequences of all this in "Inglan is a Bitch".

Linton Kwesi Johnson's

Inglan Is a Bitch

Five Nights of Bleeding