Britain is no longer a country where the system is “deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities” and very few inequalities are directly to do with race, a major review of racial disparities has concluded.
The review, carried out by ten commissioners appointed by the government last year at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement with its antiracism protests around the world, criticised the “confusing” way in which the term “institutional racism” has been applied.”
But it added that it did not deny that racism was a “real force” in the UK that needed to be taken seriously.
Critics said the report was political and divisive and designed to play down people’s experiences of racism.
In his foreword to the document, Tony Sewell, an educationalist and chairman of the commission, said that some communities were haunted by historic racism and that led to a “reluctance to acknowledge that the UK had become open and fairer”. “Put simply, we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities,” he wrote.
“The impediments and disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism. Too often ‘racism’ is the catch-all explanation, and can be simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined.”
The commission made 24 recommendations for education, health, crime and employment, and called for an end to the use of the acronym “BAME” and the term “white privilege”.
Education
The commission pointed to education as “the single most emphatic success story” for racial equality and said that Britain should be a model for other countries.
The review concluded that attainment is closely related to socio-economic status. Once that is controlled for, it found that all major ethnic groups perform better than white British pupils except for Pakistani pupils, who are at about the same level, and black Caribbean pupils, who perform worse.
The commission made a series of recommendations to help disadvantaged pupils of all ethnicities including lengthening the school day to help prevent them from falling behind, providing better careers advice to reduce drop-out rates and expanding access to apprenticeships.
It found that a higher percentage of ethnic minority young people attend university compared with white British young people, but that the latter have better outcomes at top universities.
The report said that reform to the school curriculum to teach pupils more about Britain’s multi-ethnic history was “required and long overdue”.
“We believe that pupils need to be exposed to the rich variety of British culture and the influences that have shaped it, ranging from the influence of classical civilisations, the European Enlightenment, the inflows and outflows of the British Empire, and the stream of new arrivals in the post-war period to the present day,” it said.
The report said that pupils should be taught about how Britain influenced the Commonwealth and how the Commonwealth changed the look of modern Britain.
Employment
As part of a recommendation to “advance fairness in the workplace”, the commission called for organisations to “move away” from funding unconscious bias training.
The training — aimed at tackling prejudiced ways of thinking in the workplace — was scrapped for civil servants last year by the government, which cited evidence that there was no proof it changed behaviour and that it could even backfire.
The report called for existing training to be replaced with new interventions such as “training and routine skills support for all employees in their professional and personal lives (for example on collaboration, confidence, communication, and presentation skills), which could disproportionately benefit more disadvantaged groups”.
The government should also work with a panel of academics and practitioners to develop “resources and evidence-based approaches of what does work to advance fairness in the workplace”, it recommended.
The report cited data which suggested that the hourly median pay gap between all minorities and the white British ethnic group had shrunk to 2.3 per cent, its narrowest since 2012 when it was 5.1 per cent.
Crime and policing
Some of the commission’s starkest findings relate to crime and policing.
People from ethnic minorities are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, hate crime and drug-related offences, but police forces lack diversity and do not command the trust of these communities, according to the findings.
For every white victim of homicide aged 16 to 24 in 2018-19 there were 24 black victims, according to academic research cited in the report.
In its findings the commission threw its weight behind stop-and-search, which it said was “a critical tool” but recommended more training to help police officers interact constructively with communities.
It said there was a lack of understanding of what stop-and-search is used for and a “disconnect” between politicians’ perceptions, which are that it is primarily to stop knife crime, and the data which suggests that the majority of searches are carried out on suspicion of drugs.
According to the data, in almost every police force area black people had the highest recorded stop and search rate. Despite this, one in two arrests from stop-and-search were of white people, while with one in five arrests were black people.
The review said police officers should have their body cameras switched on for all stop-and-search encounters, with failure to do so explained in writing by the officer. It also called for a strategy to improve the efficacy of stop-and-search and its consistent implementation in all parts of the country.
The commission also called for a drive to diversify police forces, citing data showing that no police force in the country is fully ethnically representative of the population it serves. It recommended that police forces introduce a “local residency requirement” when recruiting and to introduce recruitment pilots that match candidates’ skills with local needs.
The report warned that ethnic minorities were often put off from joining the police out of fear or pressure from friends or family who believe they are “betraying” their community and “joining the wrong side”. The commission said it had found “shocking racial abuse” that ethnic minority police officers suffer from members of their community.
The report also identified Class B drug offences as a major factor driving up rates of crime among ethnic minorities, accounting for nearly half of prosecutions for almost all ethnic groups. It said the authorities should divert offences of low quantities of Class B drugs, such as cannabis and ketamine, into public health services.
Social media
Online racism was highlighted as a key concern, with social media identified as a place where overt racism is still pervasive.
The report said that social media platforms “provide racists with a new, more public – and more powerful – way to inflict pain and suffering on a host of new victims.” “In many cases the perpetrators use the advent of anonymity, on these platforms and others, to target those they otherwise would not – and could not – reach in the cold light of day. Ethnic minorities, in particular, are disproportionately affected by online harassment, online trolling and cyberbullying,” it said.
The commission said the government should make online racial abuse a public policy priority and that, as a minimum, it should put pressure on social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to better enforce their own terms and conditions.
Health
The commission said it “rejects the common view” that ethnic minorities in Britain have worse health outcomes than the white population.
It said that on some key health measures, including life expectancy and overall mortality, ethnic minority groups had better outcomes than the white majority population.
It cited this as evidence that ethnicity is not the “major driver” of health inequalities and suggested instead that deprivation, geography and differences in exposure to key risk factors, such as obesity, smoking and alcohol overuse are more important indicators.
The review flagged, however, that black African men were over three times more likely to die during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic than white men, with black Caribbean and south Asian people also at higher risk of death. It suggested that this was due to these communities living in larger households in more densely populated inner-city areas, with factors such as deprivation and their occupations also putting them at higher risk.
On health overall the report suggested that there was a “complex interplay” of socio-economic, behavioural, cultural and in some cases genetic risk factors which lead to health disparities.
“Given that most ethnic minorities have higher levels of deprivation compared with the white majority population, these health outcomes clearly suggest that deprivation is not destiny,” it said.
The commission recommended that the government establishes a new independent body to target health disparities in the UK, which would work alongside the NHS. It said that one of the priorities of the Office for Health Disparities should be to increase programmes aimed at levelling up health care and outcomes.
Language and terminology
Among its recommendations, the commission called for the government to move away from using the term BAME, an acronym for black, Asian and minority ethnic. “Stop using aggregated and unhelpful terms such as ‘BAME’, to better focus on understanding disparities and outcomes for specific ethnic groups,” the report said. Instead, it recommended better focus on understanding disparities and outcomes for specific ethnic groups.
The report further described the BAME label as “no longer helpful” and “disguising huge differences in outcomes between ethnic groups”. It pointed out that it allows “institutions and businesses to point to the success of some BAME people in their organisation and absolve themselves of responsibility for people from those minority groups that are doing less well”.
The report also took aim at the term “white privilege”, which it characterised as “highly controversial and contested”. The report argued: “The phrase, coined in the USA, is undoubtedly alienating to those who do not feel especially privileged by their skin colour. Phrases like ‘white privilege’ and ‘white fragility’ imply that it is white people’s attitudes and behaviours that primarily cause the disadvantage experienced by ethnic minorities. It also reinforces the perception that being an ethnic minority in the UK is to be treated unfairly by default. The evidence we have studied does not support this. The commission rejects this approach, believes it fails to identify the real causes for disparities, and that it is counterproductive and divisive.”
