‘No problem here, move on…’
‘No problem here, move on…’
This is what Downing Street wants the British public to see, hear, and believe when it comes to the question of racism in society, in particular on questions of institutional racism, ethnic inequalities and patterns of discrimination that would ordinarily suggest that there is something deeply wrong going on — and this is indeed called institutionalised racism.
But HMG would have us believe that there while there are indeed problems, they are not intractable. Rather, much has been and is being done to tackle them, and anything else to achieve success requires you (the ill-fated minorities) to stop whinging and ‘get on your bike’ (shades of the Norman Tebbit school of job-hunting here).
The problem with the report is that while it contains some useful sections that introduce complexity, it fails to engage with the core problems of racism in society — that is, the ways in which processes operating in institutions and organisations reveal outcomes that systematically discriminate against individuals and groups based on empirical observation and analysis over time. Any attempts to correct these inequalities are only ever piecemeal or temporary plasters over huge cracks.
The systematic barriers, which can be observed at a macro level, render invisible the micro-level successes of a handful of individuals that can break the racialised glass ceilings in the corporate or public sector worlds. The reality of a few breaking through does not render the wider existence of institutional racism non-existent. These few have struggled on, jumped through the hoops, have had to over-perform and often receive less pay relative to the majority of others doing the same work, but they made it. They did so in spite of the barriers.
The realities of social life for people of colour is also compounded by class. Nowhere in the world do we find a more classed society than in England — to such an extent that race and class are deeply intertwined. Historically, modern capitalism possessed a racist logic but it maintains it to this day. Racism hides in plain sight because it hides behind class, which is taken for granted. The embeddedness of class structure in English society is the embeddedness of race and racism in society.
There is much said in the report about education and the need to appreciate how so many minorities are achieving (apparent) success. But again this is masking the truth. The reality is that these minorities often struggle and are highly differentiated. Middle class South Asian parents will send their children to grammar or independent schools because they realise the importance of human capital for economic and social gain. Working-class South Asian parents will find their children will more often than not struggle in local comprehensives, with limited employment or career opportunities for most.
But obtaining a certain level of educational outcome is not the end in itself. Too often there is discrimination in graduate recruitment, initial salary offers, all the way to issues of promotion, and then retention. Senior positions within the public sector, including the BBC, NHS, Civil Service, or judiciary, remain underrepresented among minorities… Britains elite universities are filled with former pupils from the most well-known public schools in the country — Britain’s elite public sector positions are filled by the former pupils of such schools. This is not to say that no gains have been made in recent years but the overall picture remains negative and anything else is obfuscation…
Grenfell Tower, disproportionate minority deaths due to covid, racism in the police force, stop and search, school exclusions, disproportionate prison sentences, racial profiling in the immigration services… These are all outcomes of institutionally racist processes. A lack of representation of minorities in professional sports such as football and cricket and the extent of racism that minority athletes face daily on social media are further examples of societal normalisation of racism…
Education, housing, health, and employment are all-going issues. But we also have the pernicious reality of structural and cultural Islamophobia, which was rendered invisible in the full report. The phrase ‘anti-Muslim’ is mentioned only once (in the introduction). It appears that the report is not denying that racism is a problem — but denying that it is institutional is to ignore the obvious realities facing most minorities, rendering them invisible. ‘No problem here, move on…’
I remember Tony Sewell from my race equality days pre-9/11 — he was politically black, with his community activism supported by his Christan beliefs. But today, along with a number of other people of colour on the panel, he has joined a long list of the co-opted. The report is perfect for HMG. It acknowledges problems, but they are not institutional. Rather, it’s all about you (minorities) not trying harder (shades of Ted Cantle and the community cohesion school of thought, which was based on the idea that you [minorities] should try to be nicer to your neighbours and avoid ‘parallel’ lives). Sewell has not delivered a Macpherson or a Scarman Report on the state of British race relations — far from it.
One of the biggest problems with the concept of institutional racism is that too many white people find it difficult to accept that they could be involved through their witting and unwitting practices in reproducing patterns of systemic discrimination against people of colour or other minorities. It is true that it only takes, theoretically, one racist in an organisation to taint the whole institution. The vast majority of individuals in an organisation may be actively anti-racist, but if one person is racist, their racism will trump over anti-racism, even in these settings, such is the power and effect of racism.
While the charge of racism must be taken seriously, the idea of institutional racism is not to personalise the problem, which is what I tell my many white colleagues. Any attempt to improve the current situation with respect to equalities has the effect of creating objectivity and transparency for all. While we must all take racism very seriously, the use of the term institutional racism should not prevent further discussion of problems and solutions.
The anti-racist backlash against the report would have been entirely predicted by HMG and the authors but they pursued it nevertheless. There are snippets of some good thinking in the report, but the overall aim is to kill the debate on race and racism, not advance it — and this after how covid has exposed the dark underbelly of race, institutionalised racism and racialisation, and nearly a year after 20m Americans across all US states and countless millions others across the world took part in the world’s largest protest movement to date!!! Racism was on top of the world’s agenda but this report has relegated it to the lower divisions…
‘No problem here, move on’…
