Race report: ‘UK not deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities’

The UK “should be regarded as a model for other white-majority countries” on race, a review set up by No 10 says.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities found social class and family structure had a bigger impact on how people’s lives turned out.

It said children from ethnic communities did as well or better than white pupils, but overt racism remained, particularly online.

The Runnymede Trust think tank said it felt “let down” by the report.

The commission was set up after Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests across the country last summer – triggered by the killing of George Floyd in the US.

The main findings were:

The commission’s report concluded that the UK is not yet a “post-racial country” – but its success in removing race-based disparity in education and, to a lesser extent, the economy, “should be regarded as a model for other white-majority countries”.

Chairman Tony Sewell, an education consultant and ex-charity boss who led the review, said while there was anecdotal evidence of racism, there was no proof that there was “institutional racism” in Britain.

“No-one denies and no-one is saying racism doesn’t exist”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We found anecdotal evidence of this. However, evidence of actual institutional racism? No, that wasn’t there, we didn’t find that.”

Dr Sewell added that the term “institutional racism” is “sometimes wrongly applied” as a “sort of a catch-all phrase for micro-aggressions or acts of racial abuse”.

“In fact what we’ve done is we want to almost protect the term, we want to almost say that, look – what you have do is look at this thing in terms of the evidence, where there is robust assessment and evidence of it, then apply it, deep-seated racism in institutions, yes.”

He said earlier that creating a “successful multi-ethnic society is hard, and racial disparities exist wherever such a society is being forged.

“The commission believes that if these recommendations are implemented, it will give a further burst of momentum to the story of our country’s progress to a successful multi-ethnic and multicultural community – a beacon to the rest of Europe and the world.”

Prof Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, said the report was not a “genuine effort to understand racism in Britain”.

Prof Andrews said: “It’s complete nonsense. It goes in the face of all the actual existing evidence. This is not a genuine effort to understand racism in Britain. This is a PR move to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.”

Dr Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said she felt “deeply, massively let down” by the report, and that the government did not have the confidence of black and minority ethnic communities.

Asked for her view on the commission’s suggestion that the UK is not institutionally racist, she said: “Tell that to the black young mother who is four times more likely to die in childbirth than her young white neighbour, tell that to the 60% of NHS doctors and nurses who died from Covid and were black and ethnic minority workers.

“You can’t tell them that, because they are dead.

“Institutionally, we are still racist, and for a government-appointed commission to look into (institutional) racism, to deny its existence is deeply, deeply worrying.”

She added: “We feel that if the best this government can do is come up with a style guide on BAME terminology, or what we should do about unconscious bias training, or extend a few school hours, then I’m afraid this government doesn’t carry the confidence of black and ethnic minority communities any longer, certainly not on race.”

Dr Begum also claimed the report had failed to acknowledge the “suffering” of black and ethnic minority communities, adding: “All this is is a whitewash and a script that has been written to 10 Downing Street.”

She also questioned the suitability of Dr Sewell and head of the Number 10 policy unit Munira Mirza, who had a role in setting the commission up – both of whom have questioned the existence of institutional racism previously.

The 264-page report makes 24 recommendations which include:

Matthew Ryder QC, the lawyer who represented the family of Stephen Lawrence and a former deputy mayor of London, pointed to a 2019 report by the University of Aberdeen which he said found that white working class boys with lower educational qualifications and a lower likelihood of going to university, still had higher employment rates and higher social mobility than those from minority ethnic backgrounds.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that this suggested “racism is in the system, and doesn’t suggest racism has been removed from the system”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he felt “disappointed” with what he had seen of the report’s findings so far, insisting there were “structural” issues that needed to be addressed.

Speaking on a visit to Leeds, he told reporters that whilst there was “an acknowledgement of the problems, the issues, the challenges that face many black and minority ethnic communities” there was also “a reluctance to accept that that’s structural”.

The report had been due to be published last year but was pushed back until 2021, with the commission blaming Covid restrictions and the large number of responses from the public for the delay.

At the time of its launch, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that although there was much more to be done to tackle racism, he wanted to “change the narrative” to highlight stories of success among those from ethnic minority backgrounds and “stop a sense of victimisation and discrimination”.

Six reports in four years but what action has been taken?

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