8 All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist
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Daniel Dorling
… as old ‘social evils’ have largely been overcome in affluent nations, in one of the most unequal of those countries – Britain – they have transformed into five new tenets of injustice. A continued belief in those tenets both maintains and helps to exacerbate social inequality…
My maternal grandfather was born in 1916, in an era so different from today that women were not permitted to vote. Last year I asked him about the 1929 crash and what life was like for a teenager growing up in Yorkshire in the 1930s. I talked to him about jobs and he said, “You’d know if it were as bad again because – almost no matter what your qualifications – you’d be grateful to take any job.”
For many people in Britain today, especially young adults not living with children, their current experiences and my grandfather’s recollections are not so far apart. However, in other ways social evils today have changed almost beyond recognition. Yet there are some uncanny echoes with the prejudices of the past in how we now think and in how we stall at progress.
In 1942, when my grandfather was 26 years old, William Beveridge labelled the great social evils as ignorance, want, idleness, squalor and disease. I would claim that now those five evils have been fought and largely vanquished, to be replaced by five new evils: elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair. These result today in one in seven children being labelled the equivalent of ‘delinquent’ and a sixth of households being excluded from modern social norms.
… as old ‘social evils’ have largely been overcome in affluent nations, in one of the most unequal of those countries – Britain – they have transformed into five new tenets of injustice. A continued belief in those tenets both maintains and helps to exacerbate social inequality…
My maternal grandfather was born in 1916, in an era so different from today that women were not permitted to vote. Last year I asked him about the 1929 crash and what life was like for a teenager growing up in Yorkshire in the 1930s. I talked to him about jobs and he said, “You’d know if it were as bad again because – almost no matter what your qualifications – you’d be grateful to take any job.”
For many people in Britain today, especially young adults not living with children, their current experiences and my grandfather’s recollections are not so far apart. However, in other ways social evils today have changed almost beyond recognition. Yet there are some uncanny echoes with the prejudices of the past in how we now think and in how we stall at progress.
In 1942, when my grandfather was 26 years old, William Beveridge labelled the great social evils as ignorance, want, idleness, squalor and disease. I would claim that now those five evils have been fought and largely vanquished, to be replaced by five new evils: elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair. These result today in one in seven children being labelled the equivalent of ‘delinquent’ and a sixth of households being excluded from modern social norms.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Sources of extracts vii
- Foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Inequality and poverty
- Prime suspect: murder in Britain 13
- The dream that turned pear-shaped 31
- The soul searching within New Labour 41
- Unequal Britain 49
- Axing the child poverty measure is wrong 57
-
Injustice and ideology
- Brutal budget to entrench inequality 63
- New Labour and inequality: Thatcherism continued? 65
- All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist 83
- Glass conflict: David Cameron’s claim to understand poverty 93
- Clearing the poor away 97
-
Race and identity
- Ghettos in the sky 103
- Worlds apart: how inequality breeds fear and prejudice in Britain 111
- How much evidence do you need? Ethnicity, harm and crime 115
- UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex 121
- Race and the repercussions of recession 125
-
Education and hierarchy
- What’s it to do with the price of fish? 133
- Little progress towards a fairer education system 139
- One of Labour’s great successes 147
- Do three points make a trend? 149
- Educational mobility, England and Germany 155
- Cash and the not so classless society 159
- Britain must close the great pay divide 165
- Raising equality in access to higher education 170
-
Elitism and geneticism
- The Darwins and the Cecils are only empty vessels 189
- The Fabian essay: the myth of inherited inequality 193
- The return to elitism in education 199
- The super-rich are still soaring away 209
-
Mobility and employment
- The trouble with moving upmarket 217
- Britain – split and divided by inequality 221
- London and the English desert: the grain of truth in a stereotype 225
- Are the times changing back? 237
- Unemployment and health 243
-
Bricks and mortar
- Mortality amongst street sleeping youth in the UK 249
- Daylight robbery: there’s no shortage of housing 251
- The influence of selective migration patterns 255
- The geography of poverty, inequality and wealth in the UK and abroad 263
- All connected? Geographies of race, death, wealth, votes and births 291
-
Well-being and misery
- Against the organization of misery? The Marmot Review of Health Inequalities 299
- Inequality kills 307
- The geography of social inequality and health 311
- The cartographer’s mad project 327
- The fading of the dream: widening inequalities in life expectancy in America 333
- The importance of circumstance 339
-
Advocacy and action
- Mean machine: how structural inequality makes social inequality seem natural 347
- Policing the borders of crime: who decides research? 351
- Learning the hard way 357
- When the social divide deepens 363
- Ending the scandal of complacency 365
- Our grandchildren will wonder why we were addicted to social inequality 369
- Mind the gap: New Labour’s legacy on child poverty 373
- Remapping the world’s population: visualizing data using cartograms 379
- If I were king 385
- Bibliography 387
- Index 389
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Sources of extracts vii
- Foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Inequality and poverty
- Prime suspect: murder in Britain 13
- The dream that turned pear-shaped 31
- The soul searching within New Labour 41
- Unequal Britain 49
- Axing the child poverty measure is wrong 57
-
Injustice and ideology
- Brutal budget to entrench inequality 63
- New Labour and inequality: Thatcherism continued? 65
- All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist 83
- Glass conflict: David Cameron’s claim to understand poverty 93
- Clearing the poor away 97
-
Race and identity
- Ghettos in the sky 103
- Worlds apart: how inequality breeds fear and prejudice in Britain 111
- How much evidence do you need? Ethnicity, harm and crime 115
- UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex 121
- Race and the repercussions of recession 125
-
Education and hierarchy
- What’s it to do with the price of fish? 133
- Little progress towards a fairer education system 139
- One of Labour’s great successes 147
- Do three points make a trend? 149
- Educational mobility, England and Germany 155
- Cash and the not so classless society 159
- Britain must close the great pay divide 165
- Raising equality in access to higher education 170
-
Elitism and geneticism
- The Darwins and the Cecils are only empty vessels 189
- The Fabian essay: the myth of inherited inequality 193
- The return to elitism in education 199
- The super-rich are still soaring away 209
-
Mobility and employment
- The trouble with moving upmarket 217
- Britain – split and divided by inequality 221
- London and the English desert: the grain of truth in a stereotype 225
- Are the times changing back? 237
- Unemployment and health 243
-
Bricks and mortar
- Mortality amongst street sleeping youth in the UK 249
- Daylight robbery: there’s no shortage of housing 251
- The influence of selective migration patterns 255
- The geography of poverty, inequality and wealth in the UK and abroad 263
- All connected? Geographies of race, death, wealth, votes and births 291
-
Well-being and misery
- Against the organization of misery? The Marmot Review of Health Inequalities 299
- Inequality kills 307
- The geography of social inequality and health 311
- The cartographer’s mad project 327
- The fading of the dream: widening inequalities in life expectancy in America 333
- The importance of circumstance 339
-
Advocacy and action
- Mean machine: how structural inequality makes social inequality seem natural 347
- Policing the borders of crime: who decides research? 351
- Learning the hard way 357
- When the social divide deepens 363
- Ending the scandal of complacency 365
- Our grandchildren will wonder why we were addicted to social inequality 369
- Mind the gap: New Labour’s legacy on child poverty 373
- Remapping the world’s population: visualizing data using cartograms 379
- If I were king 385
- Bibliography 387
- Index 389
