Writers discriminated against?

Last week The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) ruled that a literary prize run by the Arts Council England and Penguin UK for writers from minority ethnic groups had to include entrants of all ethnic groups, after complaints that it discriminated against white writers.

The Decibel Penguin Prize was originally to be a short story competition for British writers of Asian, African or Caribbean origin and was set up to encourage diversity. Since the ruling, the Arts Council England have said that the second year of the Prize will focus on “personal stories of immigrants to the UK.” that way “the spirit” of the original prize can be retained.

Taxpayer's money
The issue seems to be that the Prize is funded by the taxpayer. If it had been funded privately or, for example, from entry fees, there wouldn’t have been an issue. Many prizes do in fact target specific groups like the £30,000 Orange Literary Prize, which recognises women’s writing.

So should government funding be made available for prizes that encourage the talent of certain sections of society? Diran Adebayo, British writer of Nigerian parentage, commented recently that the quality of a book mattered more than whether its author happened to be black or Asian. But isn’t there a place for initiatives that break down barriers and encourage those who wouldn’t traditionally do a lot of reading to do more, like black boys for example? It can be argued that having books written by people who understand their lives, such as their peers or male role models who they can look up to, might help.

Lack of Opportunity
Positive discrimination is always a tricky subject. There will always be those who say it’s not helpful, you’ll be stopping talented people from other ethnic groups from competing and the winner will always be seen as someone who wasn’t good enough to succeed any other way. Leaving aside the fundamental flaw in this argument, in that it confuses the issue of opportunity with that of talent, and doesn’t recognise that often talented people from these groups are up against additional obstacles which have traditionally made it more difficult for them to participate; there are already many instances where government funding is used for specific groups, whether for a specific ethnic group or section of society like job seekers, so why not for a literary prize?