Britain's social tensions not rooted in institutional racism

Report finds overt racism, particularly online, still exists

A Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park in Central London on June 3, 2020. Getty Images

Concern that Britain is institutionally racist is not backed up by evidence, a UK government-commissioned review found.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, set up after the Black Lives Matter protests last year, said most of the disparities in UK society “often do not have their origins in racism”.

It noted that some communities continue to be haunted by historic racism, which created a "deep distrust" that could be a barrier to success.

The commission said "overt racism", particularly online, still existed.

Critics said the commission’s inquiry had been whitewashed, while one organisation said the findings were a distraction.

The report concluded that while the UK was not yet a "post-racial country", it was successful in removing inequalities in education and, to a lesser extent, the economy, making it "a model for other white-majority countries".

In a provocative section of the report, the authors questioned whether the Black Lives Matter protests in the UK alienated certain sections of society.

"We understand the idealism of those well-intentioned young people who have held on to, and amplified, this inter-generational mistrust," it said.

"However, we also have to ask whether a narrative that claims nothing has changed for the better, and that the dominant feature of our society is institutional racism and white privilege, will achieve anything beyond alienating the decent centre ground – a centre ground which is occupied by people of all races and ethnicities."

The report said there was an "increasingly strident form of anti-racism thinking that seeks to explain all minority disadvantage through the prism of white discrimination".

But it added: "Put simply we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. 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 evidence shows that geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion have more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism. That said, we take the reality of racism seriously and we do not deny that it is a real force in the UK."

Commission chairman Tony Sewell said the term institutional racism could not be applied to modern Britain.

He said black people born today were part of the "participation generation", while the Windrush arrival from the Caribbean in the 1950s was known as the "heroic" period when "doors were closed in the faces of black setters".

He said he was part of the rebel generation in the 1970s and 1980s.

"I walked down the street and the police were almost the enemy," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The time has changed now. This is the age now where we really go for it and take those opportunities. In education, health and employment, ethnic minorities are doing better than the white majority in many places."

The report said in some groups the wrongs of the past "still haunts the present and there was a reluctance to acknowledge that the UK had become open and fairer".

The investigation found that crime and poor educational outcomes could in most cases be attributed to family breakdowns.

"Family is also the foundation stone of success for many ethnic minorities," the report said.

The inquiry was established in June last year as anti-racism protests swept the country – sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the US in May 2020.

It was set up to investigate racial inequalities in areas including health, education, employment and criminal justice.

It said race and racism were “less important” in explaining inequalities in these areas, noting that social class and family structure were two major factors that primarily determined life outcomes.

The review found that children from ethnic communities did as well or better than white pupils in compulsory education, with black Caribbean pupils the only group to perform less well.

Major advancements were made in the area of pay, the commission said, with the pay gap between all ethnic minorities and the white majority population shrinking to 2.3 per cent, while the differences were negligible for those under 30.

The report made a total of 24 recommendations to the government in order to give a "further burst of momentum" in the UK's progress towards becoming a "successful multicultural community".

The main recommendations were:

• The acronym BAME – black, Asian and minority ethnic – be dropped because it failed to distinguish the differences between the groups
• School days should be extended, particularly in disadvantaged areas, for catch-up learning due to the pandemic
• Access to better quality careers advice in schools for children from disadvantaged backgrounds
• For organisations "to move away from funding unconscious bias training"

Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said the report was insulting to those who had experienced institutional racism.

"If advice on the use of the term BAME is the most pressing of its recommendations, then Britain's ethnic minority communities are being insulted by this report and its authors," she said on Twitter.

“Changing the term 'BAME' isn't going to solve the problem of racism on our streets. It's a distraction.”

Matthew Ryder, who represented Stephen Lawrence’s family after the teenager was killed in a racially motivated attack in 1993, said the commission “relied too strongly on access to higher education”.

"Why is it that when white boys have less educational qualifications, they still have more opportunity of getting jobs and social mobility? That is institutional racism," he told the BBC.

“It is nuanced, but there has been a real effort for people to trot out that simple statistic and say racism is not a problem.”

But Dr Sewell stressed the importance of education in determining life outcomes.

“The effect of education is transformative on individuals but also their families and their communities, sometimes within a generation,” he said.

“Another revelation from our dive into the data was just how stuck some groups from the white majority are. As a result, we came to the view that recommendations should, wherever possible, be designed to remove obstacles for everyone, rather than specific groups.”