A government race report has made headlines after it controversially commented that while “impediments” exist in Britain to POC, “very few are directly to do with racism” and most are due to family or class factors.
The report said that “you do not pass on the baton of progress by… [insisting] nothing has changed”, criticising the concept of white privilege. Likewise, it claims that the system in Britain is no longer “deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities''. It goes on to write that the term ‘BAME’ is too broad as it ignores the differences between those groups it includes.
The report partly focuses on education, writing that Black African, Indian and Bangladeshi pupils perform better than white British pupils in education, suggesting that this is due to seeing education as a way out of poverty. The report writes of a bigger proportion of ethnic minority students attending university, and achieving “remarkable social mobility”, but refuses to acknowledge “structural racism and individual teacher bias” as a cause of higher exclusion and suspension rates.
Other key parts of the report focused on stop-and-search and if it was needed over drug cases. It also wrote that there is no “overwhelming” evidence that ethnicity is a cause of health inequality.
There has been an enormous response and criticism to the report, with the shadow justice secretary saying that the PM “slammed the door” on people wishing to end racism in the UK. Additionally, the Race Equality Foundation has commented that the report places the blame on individuals, not policies, while BLM tweeted its disappointment at it not focusing on the issues within the criminal justice system. The Labour Party said the report was an “insult”, as it disregarded disproportionate covid-caused deaths of POC. According to The Guardian, as a reaction to the call for evidence, a “considerable number” of respondents claimed the UK is, in fact, systemically racist.
Written by Anna Male
Artwork by Zara Masood
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