Not Martin Luthor King's "I have a dream" speech but today is also the 50th anniversary of the Bristol Bus boycott

It's shameful to think that in my living memory, British citizens could operate such discrimination, we have come so far since then but have we come far enough? There are still instances of a need to opertate positive discrimination in order to better represent the proportion of not just race and ethicity but also sexuality and gender.

We still have some way to travel

Not Martin Luthor King's "I have a dream" speech but today is also the 50th anniversary of the Bristol Bus boycott

It's shameful to think that in my living memory, British citizens could operate such discrimination, we have come so far since then but have we come far enough? There are still instances of a need to opertate positive discrimination in order to better represent the proportion of not just race and ethicity but also sexuality and gender.

We still have some way to travel

We have come an awful long way since 1963 and its down to integration and a generation or two moving on - in my own personal experience prejudice on the grounds of skin colour was a perfectly acceptable state right through the 1960s and if you want the definition of "perfectly acceptable" then look to the media of the time, and the country's leaders.

On prime time TV (and they had huge audiences) were programs that are not shown as repeats today or shown on nostalgia compilations simply because they would be unacceptable and possibly illegal, one of the biggest audiences every Monday evening at 7pm was for "The Comedians", most of which cannot be shown now, and of course there are the obvious sit-coms through the 60s and 70s, not to mention Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers doing their blacked-up, turbaned dumb Indian/Pakistani turns.

The famous Enoch Powell "rivers of blood" speech http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html was derided at the time by politicians and comedians, not because it was a wake-up call to racism but because it was an unpalatable truth about the racist nature of our white society, a truth that we didn't want to be reminded of especially when we could see what was going on in the USA.

From my viewpoint I didn't know, or speak to, any black people until I started Technical college at 17 years of age, my all-boys Grammar School of 800 pupils had no black or asian members on the staff or in the pupil roll call until I'd been there for three eyars and a Sikh boy started in the first year, he started that school year a day later than everyone else so that the Head could warn the whole school at an assembly that the new "coloured boy" was not to be harassed or persecuted, with dire consequences if he was, and of course he was. - likewise the same thing happened a year later when the school took in its first severely disabled boy who's parents had chosen not to send him to "special school" - when I say "first" in both of these examples I really do mean the first time they had admitted non-white or disabled pupils, in at least 100 years of history, I don't know whether that was coincidence or by design, but there you are.

My parents generation and those before them were just part of the institutionalised racism and discrimination against anything not like themselves, my generation had to learn with the aid of legislation to rid our minds of such thoughts, my childrens generation simply don't see an issue and think that I invent much of the stuff that used to pass for normal in the UK in the 1960s and 70s.

To me THAT is real progress.

We have come an awful long way since 1963 and its down to integration and a generation or two moving on - in my own personal experience prejudice on the grounds of skin colour was a perfectly acceptable state right through the 1960s and if you want the definition of "perfectly acceptable" then look to the media of the time, and the country's leaders.

On prime time TV (and they had huge audiences) were programs that are not shown as repeats today or shown on nostalgia compilations simply because they would be unacceptable and possibly illegal, one of the biggest audiences every Monday evening at 7pm was for "The Comedians", most of which cannot be shown now, and of course there are the obvious sit-coms through the 60s and 70s, not to mention Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers doing their blacked-up, turbaned dumb Indian/Pakistani turns.

The famous Enoch Powell "rivers of blood" speech http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html was derided at the time by politicians and comedians, not because it was a wake-up call to racism but because it was an unpalatable truth about the racist nature of our white society, a truth that we didn't want to be reminded of especially when we could see what was going on in the USA.

From my viewpoint I didn't know, or speak to, any black people until I started Technical college at 17 years of age, my all-boys Grammar School of 800 pupils had no black or asian members on the staff or in the pupil roll call until I'd been there for three eyars and a Sikh boy started in the first year, he started that school year a day later than everyone else so that the Head could warn the whole school at an assembly that the new "coloured boy" was not to be harassed or persecuted, with dire consequences if he was, and of course he was. - likewise the same thing happened a year later when the school took in its first severely disabled boy who's parents had chosen not to send him to "special school" - when I say "first" in both of these examples I really do mean the first time they had admitted non-white or disabled pupils, in at least 100 years of history, I don't know whether that was coincidence or by design, but there you are.

My parents generation and those before them were just part of the institutionalised racism and discrimination against anything not like themselves, my generation had to learn with the aid of legislation to rid our minds of such thoughts, my childrens generation simply don't see an issue and think that I invent much of the stuff that used to pass for normal in the UK in the 1960s and 70s.

To me THAT is real progress.

Meanwhile across the pond, it looks like some things have hardly changed at all in the South

Blacks asked to leave restaurant because white patron felt "threatened"

Meanwhile across the pond, it looks like some things have hardly changed at all in the South

Blacks asked to leave restaurant because white patron felt "threatened"

Indeed

I'm intrigued by your call for positive discrimination in the job market, re sexuality and gender. Perhaps you could expand your thoughts on how you would judge the merits of a one legged Nigerian lesbian with a limited grasp of the English language, to be a better fit in the workplace, rather than say, an overly flamboyant Anglo Saxon transvestite chappie in the John Inman stylee. Extra points awarded for post op rather than simply a Friday night Freda?

And at the second interview, would pictures of the candidate on all fours wearing a gimp mask, and being enthusiastically rogered by large strap on wearing female, possibly trump the NVQ qualifications of a more "normal" applicant?

In this bold new world are there any lines in the sand? Would peadophilia or necrophobia simply be considered as an expression of a persons sexuality, and not in anyway an impediment to a full and fruitful career at Codhead PLC?

Indeed

I'm intrigued by your call for positive discrimination in the job market, re sexuality and gender. Perhaps you could expand your thoughts on how you would judge the merits of a one legged Nigerian lesbian with a limited grasp of the English language, to be a better fit in the workplace, rather than say, an overly flamboyant Anglo Saxon transvestite chappie in the John Inman stylee. Extra points awarded for post op rather than simply a Friday night Freda?

And at the second interview, would pictures of the candidate on all fours wearing a gimp mask, and being enthusiastically rogered by large strap on wearing female, possibly trump the NVQ qualifications of a more "normal" applicant?

In this bold new world are there any lines in the sand? Would peadophilia or necrophobia simply be considered as an expression of a persons sexuality, and not in anyway an impediment to a full and fruitful career at Codhead PLC?