The government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities 250+ page report aims to set out a new ‘positive agenda for change’ following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter Movement. The report’s 24 recommendations have been grouped under four overarching aims: to build trust between different communities and the institutions that serve them; to promote greater fairness to improve opportunities and outcomes for individuals and communities; to create agency so individuals can take greater control of the choices and that impact their lives; and to achieve genuine inclusivity to ensure all groups feel a part of UK society. One of the main conclusions of the report, however, has been against the idea of structural racism, despite the evidence to the contrary.
While the report acknowledges overt racism, it argues that institutional racism is not borne out of the evidence. This is despite the fact that racialised communities have disproportionately negative outcomes in every key social policy area such as housing, education, criminal justice, employment and health – most recently exemplified in the unequal impacts of the coronavirus on Black, Asian and minority ethnic people. People from racialised communities are more likely than white people to be living in poor, overcrowded housing conditions; more likely to be detained compulsorily when in contact with mental health services; have higher maternal mortality rates; are more likely to be stopped and searched; more likely to have longer prison sentences; more likely to be unemployed or in lower paid employment; and more likely to live in deprived neighbourhoods. All of these disparities (and more) can be found on the government’s own race disparity audit website. If this cannot be explained by structural and systemic racism and instead by class (which is of course inextricably linked to race), family and religion then we start to enter a zone in which individual failings are the focus. The report says factors such as family influence, socioeconomic background, and religion have a more significant impact on life chances than racism. This is in line with ideas around the ‘deserving’ and ‘underserving poor’ which sees individuals as responsible for their own impoverishment, the former being those such as older people and the latter being those such as immigrants. The report, in this way, perhaps tells us more of the government than it does of racism in the UK because, if all these individuals are Black or Brown, we start to formulate a picture that it is perhaps not all individuals, just those who are not white British. From here, we start to enter the dangerous territory around culture and genetics.
The report is full of cherrypicked data and ill-founded conclusions. The data clearly illustrates the unequal relationship between racialised people and access to social services. The authors write about the successes in education where racialised communities sometimes fare better than their white counterparts, but there are variations between groups. Furthermore, unless that same Indian heritage or Black student is able to get the same amount of job interviews, to progress to positions of power, or to earn similar wages to their white counterpart, doing slightly better in school is not an accurate measure of the absence of racism in the UK. Of course, progress has been made but unless that progress translates into the equality of opportunity and outcome then we are far from a “model for racial equality”. Moreover, the authors write that, “The Making of Modern Britain teaching resource is our response to negative calls for ‘decolonising’ the curriculum. Neither the banning of white authors or the token expressions of Black achievement will help to broaden young minds”. The authors are absolutely right here, it has nothing to do with the banning of white authors or a tokenistic celebration of Black achievement. What it is about is expanding the range of perspectives and experiences explored.
This report presented an opportunity to truly grapple with the issues surrounding inequality and the racial tenets of that, but instead what has been released is something which will only serve to divide us further through its cherrypicked statistics. As the report notes, this “will present a major shift in the race debate”. This it certainly does… a significant shift backwards and if this is our “new race agenda for the country”, we are skating on thin ice.