Report that says Institutional Racism doesn't exist and more ...

[Dustyboots]

Is no one else angry about this?

I can't find any other threads about it.

What is going on?

And the bit that says the “slave period”, was not just about “profit and suffering” and argues that the era was also about how “culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain”.

Are people unaware of this? Or do we just no longer care ...

'First of all do you really think a private school is the place to get a representative sample of the economic effects of divorce??'

It was you who said that the family structure was the issue.

It isn't though is it. It's the money.

TBH when it comes to racism in society, it's the police that I am particularly interested in.

The report is not just about employment. It's much broader than that.

'minsters should look at initiatives to prevent family breakdown.'

From the BBC.

What sort of things I wonder.

@NiceGerbil

I know stacks of white single parents at work as well.

And at the primary school there were a stack of SAHM.

Funny how they are doing ok isn't it.

Yes, of course the same thing affects white families, that's the point! Why do you think white w/c families have similar outcomes to other poor families for goodness sake? The mechanism doesn't care what your race is.

Who you knew in a private school or at your work is completely immaterial.

There is a link between family structure and poverty. You can shout all you want that it isn't so but it's in dispute by exactly no one who looks at the data. If families in different ethnic or other types of groups tend to organise themselves differently, that will show itself, at a statistically significant level, in the stats on disparities.

This is basic population analysis stuff.

The MONEY is the problem. There is no intrinsic issue with single parent families or ones with SAHM.

Yes single parent families are more likely to be in poverty. But it is the MONEY that is the problem. Not the nature of the family.

Your solution is... What? How do you intend to reduce the number of single parent families in certain groups? The government are going to have a think. I can't even think of what the solution might be. What are your thoughts?

(Seeing as it's the family structure that's the main problem, and everything else flows from that).

TBH when it comes to racism in society, it's the police that I am particularly interested in

Met policeman Ben Hannam.

Member of banned right wing extremist group, lied on his application form and police didn't take up references.

He passed police vetting checks and was only exposed because anti-fascists leaked data from an extremist website.

Mauritian-Muslim girlfriend previously. Has a gay grandparent and a Jewish step-grandparent. Known to have intolerant views since schooldays.

Asked someone on site how he could get a gun.

Found to be in possession of sexual images of children. Had also been using a young relative's travel card to use public transport free of charge.

& He managed to serve as a Met police officer for 2 years.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-56604470

Racist government and racist law enforcement, yet Britain apparently has done well in terms of race relations

@NiceGerbil

The MONEY is the problem. There is no intrinsic issue with single parent families or ones with SAHM.

Yes single parent families are more likely to be in poverty. But it is the MONEY that is the problem. Not the nature of the family.

Your solution is... What? How do you intend to reduce the number of single parent families in certain groups? The government are going to have a think. I can't even think of what the solution might be. What are your thoughts?

(Seeing as it's the family structure that's the main problem, and everything else flows from that).

Where do you think people get money? They get it from jobs.

If is a causal chain here, just because you feel uncomfortable saying that some family structures bring in more money than others doesn't change that. I live in a one income family, or close to it - I am pretty comfortable with the fact that it affects our monetary situation.

There are any number of possibilities for intervention, especially given that there are several different problems mentioned. A really simple one might be to try and improve the situation of low income families generally, there are a number of possibilities that could work and it would have the very excellent effect that it would not need to be targeted at any particular ethnic group - it would help the poor in all.

Some people would suggest encouraging women in families where they stay home to work, and there might be some ways to do that though on the other hand, perhaps they would prefer not to.

You could look at institutional social spending in terms of things like community infrastructure which would be most helpful for children with fewer resources at home.

In some cases we might ask if the disparity is important. Is it really a bad thing if one group tends to have a cultural appreciation for working in building trades while another one admires bankers, so long as both have a decent standard of living? What do the people in question think?

As far as single parent households, that would probably be a good thing to try and minimise, because it seems to not be only an economic issue. Parenting alone is not great.

As for why some communities have more of those households, I am not sure anyone really knows. You can look at the stats on the increase in households of that type across demographics and they are in some ways suggestive - in the US for example there were always more single parent families in the black community from early on, very likely the legacy of slavery and family disruption. In the 60s there was a sharp increase among whites and blacks but much more in the black community (and I believe that s still true if you take class out of it but I may be misremembering that.) Maybe it's the legacy of what came earlier, or to do with other social change. Values and cultural practices in a community are passed on over time in many cases, they become encultured, and that is true whether they are useful or non-useful.

As to how to fix it, maybe that isn't something that can be done by the state? Lowry, who I mentioned earlier, takes the position that this is something for the black community to tackle within itself, as it isn't about things that can be socially engineered. Certainly there are people within that community who would like to see that happen.

But in any case, simply putting it down to racism really gives us none of those possibilities. Systemic racism is just a word if you can't explain the mechanism that you think makes it work in the system.

Just wanted to quietly leave Tony Sewell’s Wikipedia page here... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Sewell

Oh look, he’s denied that institutional racism exists, for years. Funny how his report finds exactly the same thing?

Organisations and academics have now started coming out of the woodwork saying their input has been misrepresented.

In my view, the report is cynical, disingenuous and gaslighting. It’s designed to “quiet” the population and pander to the Conservative electoral base. The Commissioning team were carefully picked to ensure a result, and nothing is more effective than having brown people deny elements of racism.

The worst things about the report:

• it says that there’s a “new story” being written about slavery - one that isn’t about profit and suffering. So... slavery, not that bad?! The fact that that was allowed to be published says a lot. I can’t even.
• it ignores key statistics that show systemic racism, like the fact that Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth in England and Wales, and Asian women twice as likely. Stop and search statistics, the fact that even when Black boys outperform working class white boys educationally their long term prospects and earning power are still less, police brutality statistics against Black people. They also argue that the ethnicity pay gap is under 3% - this is physically impossible to know - the majority of organisations don’t have that data and where they do they aren’t publishing numbers anything like that - my employer’s is 21%. That’s literally a bullshit number.

Lastly: there’s a nasty implication to the report that ethnic minorities use institutional racism to cover up a lack of attainment or drive. Women used to face the same argument when they argued about misogyny, feminists were labelled “angry” and “man hating”, multiple articles were written to gaslight women who knew there was still an issue - and there still is an issue now. England as a country doesn’t respond well to allegations of unfairness - the English sense of itself as full of propriety and fair play didn’t budge when they were transporting millions of slaves as cattle - why would it budge now? No, better to defend the Commonwealth, which is a very nicely packaged set of countries that England once, relatively recently in the grand scheme of things, forcibly owned.

TL:DR - ethnic minorities don’t want racism to exist. I would love it if racism went away, individual and institutional! It’s the most soul destroying concept: to live in a country where your rave isn’t valued. Above and beyond casual racism from individuals which makes you want to cry, you know you’re swimming uphill generally. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder - I’m very, very much a success story. It would be so easy to say, “well, England broadly works for me! Nothing to see here, folks. If you tried as hard as I did you might make it - do better and stop making us good, successful black people look bad.” - but that would be fundamentally wrong, which I hope Tony Sewell knows because that’s exactly what he’s doing in this report. And I hope it eats him up inside.

Thank God the commissioners have put class back on the table. For too long now class has been shoved under the carpet in favour of an elitist and bonkers race and gender obsessions and fringe issues. Often London based. Probably because our establishments, media, academia etc, are so painfully middle class, woke and who have paid too much mind to CRT and USA identity politics.

Well done. I honestly think this will go down as one our greatest commissions, on a par with the historic 1842

The government have put class back on the table but nothing can be done about it. Nothing will change about class and they also get to neutralise cries of racism. A deeply cynical move.

The government have put class back on the table but nothing can be done about it.

Not sure you understand the purpose of a commission. A commission is an investigation. It is a first step. A start

Nothing will change about class and they also get to neutralise cries of racism. A deeply cynical move

I would suggest it is you who is the cynic, and defeatist. This commission suggests we are more divided by class than race, but also that we can be united by our class too in the future. It is left wing, in an old fashioned sense, in that regard. I'm baffled as to why people can't see the positives in it and only complain, endlessly. Theres a lot of bourgeois pearl clutching going on

It's a brave move in the current climate of side issue fringe activism, often imported from the USA, and London centric middle class obsessed media, academia and so on

Even if you disagree, at least its got people talking

LaLaLanded

Why are you singling "England" out?

@PRsecrets

So, are you saying this is a bad thing? I am not sure what you are stating that it was okay for the school to show a white washed depiction of the demographic of children, but when they are actually represented it's an issue?

I had this in a previous professional role. I was the only black equivalent in the role. They put me on all their media, splashed all over the website- I did all the company promotions, particularly recruitment packs etc. But inside was a different story- was treated appallingly - given no support, and then eventually managed out. After I left. I felt really used and felt bad for all the ethnic minorities who would apply to work there based on the promotional work I did for them.

Representation only matters if it’s a genuine seat at the table rather than just to have a mannequin in your shop front in order to appear to tick the right boxes.

But that is not the issue. You need to remove fact from personal account. Does the representation reflect the school? Are there black teachers and students? If so, they need to be represented. That is the crux of the conversation.

Racism is everywhere, but first there needs to be visibility. Visibility in adverts, films, brochures - holiday, schools, hotels, resturants..it becomes the norm to see a culturally diverse face. Do they use those facilities and services? Are they customers and consumers like the rest of the UK?

Your experience means that there is a need to fight, not for equality, but for fairness. They are not one and the same. But to do that, you must be visible.

[quote Knitterbabe]@Kamr123
I wasn’t saying it is bad or good. I was suggesting a pp watch the adverts and see for themselves.
And the other stuff you quoted wasn’t me.[/quote]
Apologies if I misread the thread of the conversation.

I will read this thanks for posting OP.

From a quick glance I'm intrigued that a Tory government has acknowledged we are doing better on race than class.

I am disgusted by the report, the government should be embarrassed..

@Flaxmeadow should I not? It was deliberate.

This bit struck me as absolutely disgusting " the “slave period”, was not just about “profit and suffering” and argues that the era was also about how “culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain" It was an incredibly stupid comment.

Maybe what they were trying to say was that this feeds into a victim mentality that is unhelpful and that we need to celebrate more how some black people manage to overcome historic mistreatment?

The rest of the report contains some sensible comments. Class and culture are major barriers to progress. Too easy to blame everything wrong in your life on your skin colour without considering how your attitude and culture contributes to it. If black everything you say and do must apparently be accepted without question, everything you want must be handed to you on a plate - at least that is the impression the Black Mumsnetter section gives. It embraces victim culture. But culture and class are caused, to a considerable extent, by slavery and historic racism, that needs to be recognised.

As for the police - if I behaved towards the police in the way say Dawn Butler did I'd expect to be arrested by them while they tried to find every single problem on my car they could charge me for. Attitude matters.

So I do care but I also dont see what I can do about it.

No problem; it gets confusing when a quote includes a previous quote 🙂

@PRsecrets preach! Isn’t it tiring having to be as close as possible to perfect all the time? I’ve realised that my over-achievement is almost pathological at this point.

Yes it’s quite possible to change your class if you come from a family background where education and hard work is valued as can be seen from the success of minorities evidenced in this report. Basically my parents said you won’t be able to get those “white collar” jobs like management in NHS that surprisingly are dominated by white peoples in a country where institutional racism does not exist.

What I can’t understand is why white working class males allegedly come from homes where educational attainment is not valued? As a black person with this background having grown up on a council estate and now buying a house in a very middle class part of the country I hate that the report is basically using the success of minorities as a stick to beat them with.

@alreadytaken why are you trying to find a sensible explanation for what they wrote about slavery? This document didn’t just get bashed out by Tony on his laptop with a glass of Pinot - it’s been through multiple reviews. They wrote what they meant to write, how they meant to write it.

I disagree with the rest of your statement but the bit above is really worrying. We’re very quick as a society to excuse statements like the one about slavery. We also find it very easy to believe a narrative that ethnic minorities are playing the victim, and if they only worked harder, they would succeed.