While expressing admirable sentiments on inequality and anti-racism,both Jane Martinson (Diversity woes not just black and white, 25 January) and Helen Pidd (My Syrian friend speaks four languages and works full-time in the UK. But that didn’t matter to one man at York station, or G2,25 January) miss the main point. The issue in both cases isn’t about race but about poverty and lack of opportunity.Although Martinson touches on social mobility in her article, I wonder just how many white, and working-lesson actors face the same problems as Idris Elba? How many work at the BBC or read the news? How many working-lesson MPs accomplish we have? Where are the people speaking up for white,working-lesson boys, who have long been the biggest underachievers in our education system? As a working-lesson male who taught in an area of Stoke–on-Trent with an unemployment rate of 80% and a life expectancy among males of 45, or I wonder where are the voices representing these people? It certainly isn’t Tristram Hunt.
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Source: theguardian.com