Is First Minister Sturgeon a 'No' voter when it comes to race equality in who runs Scotland ?

Earlier this year, Fiona Hyslop, government minister for cultural matters, appointed Richard Findlay to head up the Board of Creative Scotland.  At the time I commented :

the body charged with the strategic development of culture in Scotland is led by an all-white Board, with no Visible Minority Ethnic people on the Board at all.

At that time, February, the Board looked like this [see montage on the right]:

Since then the Creative Scotland Board has been given another stir by Fiona Hyslop.  The corporate blurb on who is now who can be read - and seen - here.  While the gender balance may well have been fixed, it is obvious that the Board remains more than a little pale and not that interesting.

Early in August Hyslop and Creative Scotland oozed oleaginous self-congratulation on how the Board had reached the 50:50 gender target, and that it was the first body to do so since Nicola Sturgeon had launched the Partnership for Change on 25th June.  In all of the unctuous drooling over having achieved the First Minister's directive on gender balance in less than 2 months, careful study of the text reveals that government is quietly constructing a hierarchy of equality in Scotland.

While there can be no question but that the elimination of gender discrimination from the Board's of Scotland's public bodies is long overdue, this cannot and must not be achieved at the expense of creating a hierarchy in the work being done to eliminate discrimination across all groups of people who experience discrimination in their lives on a daily basis.

If the Board of Creative Scotland can be made to achieve a gender balance within 2 months of the directive issued by Nicola Sturgeon, it is fair to ask just where the directive is on bringing a racial balance to the Board of Creative Scotland, and just when will it be achieved?  If gender balance on public and third sector boards is to be achieved by 2020, why has Nicola Sturgeon not set a timetable for race equality to be achieved on those same boards ?  The absence of similar directives for balancing boards in relation to disabled and non-disabled people suggests that this community of people is also being pushed further back in the equality queue being created by Scottish government.

it is already obvious that the government's record on
equality lacks credibility and that if you are Black
Minority Ethnic or disabled, Ms Sturgeon will not always
do her best for you

The First Minister at the recent SNP 2015 conference invited people to judge her government on its record and to always do the best for you.  With the conference reports barely old enough to wrap this week's deep-fried Mars Bar suppers, it is already obvious that the government's record on equality lacks credibility and that if you are Black Minority Ethnic or disabled, Ms Sturgeon will not always do her best for you.