What if Oxford PPE graduates on TV were made to wear pink conical hats?

You can’t discuss racial inequality without using the N-word. And you can’t debate social justice without adding the C-word and the F-word as well.

In this case the N-word is Nepotism, the C-word is Credentialism and the F-word is Favouritism.

What is often overlooked in the debate about social justice is that inequality of opportunity need not arise from the exercise of negative preferences but from a mildly positive, unintended bias operating in reverse.

Q. What is, at birth, the best predictor that you will become a doctor? A. Having a parent who is a doctor. Hence there are very many doctors from BAME backgrounds, but not in the expected ratio of B, A and ME. This inheritance bias will drive continuing disparity even if no actual racism is involved, through homophily rather than xenophobia. Role models matter. As someone who grew up on the South Side of Chicago told me: ‘You can’t be what you don’t see.’

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The world does not work in practice the way it works in theory. In practice, whether you need a fork-lift truck driver or a TV interviewee, there is often no formal selection process. Instead, someone goes to the warehouse/research department and asks: ‘Anyone know someone who could do this?’ Unless the social networks of your staff are miraculously representative of the population, a kind of network-nepotism kicks in. Even if the bias is small, the multiplicative effects can be very strong.

There are rational reasons for filling jobs through networks. We trust people we know, and few employees will risk their reputation by knowingly recommending a kleptomaniac fork-lift driver. Nevertheless, as Thomas Schelling demonstrated with his chessboard experiment (Google it), extreme outcomes can emerge from a combination of mild forces.