NEWTON'S OPTIC:THE EQUALITY Authority is issuing new guidelines tojournalists on the danger of stereotyping groups within society, writes Newton Emerson
It could start by applying those guidelines to its own biannual newsletter.
In the current spring 2008 edition of Equality News, an article on housing and the disabled states: "Landlords in the private housing sector are often reluctant to accept people with disabilities."
No evidence is cited for this outrageous slur.
Another article on multiple discrimination gives the hypothetical example of: "a gay minority ethnic man who could not rent a flat when the landlord has seen the person and his partner".
The article adds that multiple discrimination occurs mostly in the labour market. So why pick on landlords again? This Rigsby-style Rising Dampcaricature is an outdated and quite possibly anti-Semitic 1970s stereotype. It is time the Equality Authority recognised the diversity of post-property-boom Irish landlords. The same edition of Equality Newsalso stereotypes people in the media as ageist and youth-obsessed. An article on ageism in the leisure sector asks, rhetorically: "How often are older people portrayed on television or in the print media as participating in physical activities?"
The answer is all the time.
No commercial for health insurance, multivitamins or denture cream is complete without a jogging granny or a tennis-playing granddad. Any pensioner who picks up a bat or a ball is practically guaranteed a feature in their local newspaper and an appearance on The Afternoon Show. If anything, sporting geriatrics are over-represented by the media.
In the autumn-winter 2007/2008 edition of Equality News, an article on the European Year of Equal Opportunities reports work in Germany "to integrate 'difficult children' in classes" and "strengthen the influence possibilities of the general public" for the "increasing of social conscience in relation to the positive aspects of diversity". This language reinforces sinister German stereotypes and may well have contributed to the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty.
The same edition also says: "while migrant/African women tend be to highly educated, they are often over-qualified for the jobs they can access". Isn't this a racial stereotype? What about the hundreds of girls who leave UCD every year with a psychology degree?
The spring-summer 2007 edition of Equality Newscalls for progress on "gender conditioning in men". There is no mention of gender conditioning in women. The winter 2006/2007 edition does likewise. It also urges "liberation from the inflexibilities imposed on men by current dominant models of masculinity".
Isn't this a ludicrous stereotype? If so, it is one which greatly preoccupies the Equality Authority. Launching the new guidelines, which are entitled Give Stereotyping the Boot, chief executive Niall Crowley said: "Children's ads portray girls as being passive and nurturing, while boys are seen as being aggressive." There is scant scientific basis for this claim. Experiments consistently show that children have a clear concept of gender from infancy and exhibit conventional gender roles without external cues.
It seems that the culture of the equality industry is defined by fashionable nonsense, one-eyed sexism, contempt for property, a fixation with the media and the need to publish lots of pompous newsletters.
But perhaps this opinion should not be published. It is a bit of a stereotype.