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Dear me sounds like everyone has spent too long in the sun and got crabby with heatstroke what a dreadful ill tempered thread I’m surprised Matron hasn’t consigned it to the bin!
What a shocker of a thread.
Go and give your head a shake
Twitter: Jackh1092
Hindsight is 20/20 so make the most of it!Why do you think Richi Persad gets all the gigs he does?
I do wonder about people who sit watching a programme and count how many blacks are on it or how many women maybe try watching the show instead of looking to be offended.
Is there any shred of evidence that non-white’s are showing an avid interest in becoming involved, yet are being shunned, or somehow having barriers put in their way?
If not, it’s a non-starter as a discussion.
Sometimes things just are the way they are.
Nothing worse than setting out to shoehorn square pegs into round holes to try to prove something that doesn’t even exist.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Steve, if you chilled out and put down the defensive ‘them vs us’ mentality you might understand what Cormack is saying.
He isn’t saying the industry is racist, rather that it’s not diverse in comparison to other sports etc.
The way I see it –
The industry itself is mainly middle class, with the general punter mainly working/middle class.
Middle classes around about the main sections of racing (Newmarket, Lambourn etc) have little to no ethnic heritage and because of this the middle class ethnic ranges never really change in the sport (we all know Sport and especially racing is a ‘jobs for the lads’ type of employment sector).
Punters who I see as more towards working class are more diverse, especially in incredibly diverse areas like London & Birmingham for example. But do they want to go racing which is driven mainly by white middle classes? Especially when most of their friends probably don’t punt on the racing? I wouldn’t go either. That’s just one issue why ethnic communities don’t go racing, in my opinion. it’s very complex and hard to get a full grasp on.
This isn’t just a skin colour diversification issue, how many Eastern Europeans are in the UK now and I’ve yet to see one at the Racing.
Josh Apiafi was on Luck On Sunday about diversity recently and he came across well bringing up quite a few good points.
It’s not anywhere near the biggest issue racing has but it’s one that if improved would help the sport in many ways, especially with the lack of stable staff & new owners for example.
I don’t think there is racism in horse racing – as such. But seems a perception amongst minorities that they are in some way not welcome at racecourses. That perception needs to change. Many ethnic minorities love racing/gambling, betting often on the internet and frequenting betting shops… yet so few actually go racing. Why?
Hope research can find the reason. Good so many women have come in to “Racing” recently. Possibly encouraged by Tanya and (in particular) Clare. May be the same can be achieved by seeing more ethnic minorities on TV – of course as long as those chosen know their jobs well. That said, although ATR have some female “presenters”, RUK seem to have a monopoly of female form experts who’ve all been good additions to their team.
No reason why the disabled can’t make a big mark in “Racing”, as RUK’s Mark Howard proves.
Token presence brought in just to appear PC is never a good idea, but imo these have been greatly exaggerated. Persad “gets the gigs” because he’s a good presenter. Disappointing him being there hasn’t encouraged a greater number of ethnic minority racegoers. Needs more than just Rishi. Have met/listened to Ken Pitterson at the races and his paddock knowledge would be a great asset. Those at work within racing (jockeys etc) could have an occasional spot on programmes like The Sunday Forum – especially after a big win – eg Sean Levy after his 2000 victory. However, unfortunately there’s currently only a certain amount of possibilities; hopefully that will change given time.
Value Is Everything100% Banker that someone not from the UK will win the London Marathon next year (unless he’s Usain Bolt) and will probably be a Kenyan or an Ethiopian, they are just better at it than we are and built for the job as are our jockeys at riding racehorses
and as for presenters I hardly take any notice of what most of them say and I don’t care what ethnic background they come from as long as they have a reasonable knowledge of racehorses and courses in general.When you think how racing used to be it has come a long way from the flat cap and raincoat brigade with successful lady jockeys and trainers and women presenters on TV I think Clare Balding with Willie Carson was the first.
In time there will be more ethnic presenters both men and women but you can’t just use a scattergun approach to place these people in jobs just to please the minority it will be doomed to fail, let it happen as a natural course with those who have developed a love for the sport that will shine through and they will be a welcome addition to any Racing information site such as ATR…Jac
Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...Twice Over wrote:
“I am sure Persad is a decent bloke , he tries hard, but he just is not that knowledgeable, or at least fails to show it.”=============================
His terrestrial TV racing gigs, and the role of interview muppet he’s invariably been asked to play in most of those, regularly do him a disservice. Simply by expedient of a broader remit I think his RUK work is better, and the Armchair Jockeys webcasts alongside Lydia Hislop and Steve Mellish were better still (I don’t know if these are still going, but I fear possibly not).
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Drone wrote:
“Having said that I do find it outrageous and deeply offensive that there hasn’t been a decent White since the elderly Dessie”===================
Russe Blanc won the Warwick Classic Chase (National as was) in 2016 – that decent enough?
(Hello again, FriendDrone, by the way. It’s been a little while).
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
thejudge1 wrote:
“So what racing could do is go out and headhunt someone from other parts of media, (I presume that’s how richi got his job- he wasn’t in racing in the first place?”===========================
No, Rishi sought and gained work in the broader racing broadcasting arena from the floorboards up, the same as quite a number of people I’m currently monitoring the progress of between the flags. Plenty from the East Anglia administrative Area recall his infant steps at commentating on point-to-points there what must have been not shy of two decades ago now.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
“Plenty from the East Anglia administrative Area recall his infant steps at commentating on point-to-points there what must have been not shy of two decades ago now.”
Amazed that nobody took him out the back and put him out of his misery.If the sport isn’t intrinsically racist, and I do not believe that it is, it nevertheless leaves itself clumsily open to that accusation often enough.
Note Jamie Moore’s use of the term Kit-Kat in reference to a non-white member of stable staff on live TV.
Note Jason Ward’s fine for comparing a horse’s tongue to a black man’s todger at the end of 2016.
Note the unfortunate nickname of Osama with which certain in the changing room saddled Shashi Righton during his riding career (I wonder whether any of those have approached him for rides since then, in his capacity of jockey’s agent).
Note the frequent half-hearted misspellings of Rishi Persad (not a hard name to get right, considering it’s spelled exactly as it sounds) on internet fora and social media everywhere.
Note one point-to-point trainer’s fondness for stating his more stamina-imbued horses stay longer than asylum seekers.
Then compare and contrast these awkward episodes with the story of Abdulkareem Musa Adam, the Sudanese refugee turned workrider for Nikki Evans:
https://www.racingpost.com/news/young-rider-from-darfur-recognised-with-nomination/268744
Adam’s story shows what’s achievable with sufficient application from the rider and sufficient openness and encouragement from racing as a whole and trainers in particular; and considering Newmarket isn’t prohibitively far away from the Dovers of this world, I would be imploring trainers there to be putting out feelers to the authorities to determine whether any of those refugees currently being processed have either previous experience of, or an interest in, working with horses.
I’m sure there are rather more steps to the workflow than even I’m aware of, but in essence there is a readymade solution to Newmarket’s shortage of workriders and stable staff hidden in plain sight. Some may cite language issues as a reason not to recruit refugees, but then one Lanfranco Dettori’s English skills were precisely those of Abdulkareem Musa Adam when he first arrived in Britain – absolutely zip.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Unfortunately, the politically correct always end up creating problems where there aren’t any. Anyway, I would have thought that one thread on this bollocks should have been enough.
The other thread was started a year ago, I just added a link incase the op had not seen it
Blackbeard to conquer the World
Just caught up with yesterday’s Sunday Forum; credit to ATR for making a half-hearted effort by inviting Josh Apiafi onto the programme for a (somewhat limited) discussion about diversity in the sport.
To my own list from further up this page, I’m afraid I must add three more examples of racism from people engaged in racing that have popped up in my social media feeds since the weekend alone.
Specifically: two gruesomely Islamophobic share-if-you-agree posts from a licensed trainer and a winning amateur rider, followed yesterday by an example of Sinophobia straight out of the 1970s comedy circuit from a prominent sponsor of recent vintage.
No names, as these were sent to my personal feeds and thus aren’t in the public domain in the same way as the previous examples. Nonetheless, I have gently suggested to the subjects in question that their posts, any of which would have earned them summary dismissal if shared in many professions outwith racing, do not do them particular credit.
As I said before, if the sport isn’t intrinsically racist, and I do not believe that it is, its practitioners don’t always do all they can to convince otherwise.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
I find the twitchiness and discomfiture of certain types of people when discussions about diversity arise much more interesting than the subject itself.
The safety blanket of ‘political correctness gone mad’ is unfurled and they hide under it until the conversation goes away again.What they’re actually frightened of absolutely intrigues me.
That said ,I still don’t have much time for most diversity discussions and one of the biggest reasons is that most of them seem to be about black people.
Black people are just one ethnic group (what about gender and sexuality or other ethnic backgrounds?) and if anyone is trying to tell me that the term black people is shorthand for anyone that isn’t white then that ironically is probably why things aren’t diverse in the first place,because all kinds of different people are being herded together for reference purposes when the fact is that everyone is different and what they like or don’t like can’t be determined by the colour of their skin or any other kind of generalisation.
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