It's time to shift the dial in how we talk about race
Following the launch of the government's 'Inclusive Britain' project, Richard Norrie writes that this a positive step towards adopting a sensible approach when it comes to dealing with racial issues in the UK.
The launch of the government's Inclusive Britain project is a step in the right direction. Gone is the insistence on a popular fatalism that our country is one intrinsically hostile to those not white. Gone too is the notion that evidence of statistical disparity on any given metric between ethnic groups is necessarily evidence of racism as causal.
Inclusive Britain is the government's response to the Sewell report – the findings of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities led by Tony Sewell. While there is a break with orthodoxy, this can be viewed as the continuation of polices set in motion by Theresa May. We were told there would be evidence, then diagnosis, then polices to correct whatever problems there might be. All this has come to pass, only the preferred conclusion of many was not found to be supported by the evidence. Sewell provoked a severe backlash, but perhaps the most vocal critics might reflect on the consequences of their words, as well as the poverty of their criticisms. 'Lived experience' is not sufficient to trump objective empirical evidence. Teaching unduly those from an ethnic minority background that the 'structure' is out to get them only stymies ambition.
It is true that there is racial or ethnic discrimination in Britain; it is impossible to think of a country where this would not be the case. It is true there is racially-inspired violence and abuse as well as prejudice, only these are not the sole preserve of white people. All these things can damage people's lives to varying degrees. But it is also true that these things have not constituted enough to block the economic advance of groups on the whole. We know this from the experience of minority groups who are now over-represented in the higher-professions. We are seeing a fully-integrated British ethnic minority elite taking up its share of the responsibility to lead, most notably Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng and Kemi Badenoch. All Tories.
We further see a burgeoning presence in the professions, with ethnic diversity in line at the top with their respective entry points. All too often we expect our elites to resemble the population as a whole, ignoring the fact that around half our non-white ethnic minority comes from overseas and are not immediate candidates for the British establishment. For their children, the story is different. So many corporate and state diversity schemes are based on this assumption, without realising they are assuming we can have diversity without difference, that all peoples are the same and any deviance from the census figure of 14 per cent non-white, is necessarily evidence of white racism or 'barriers'.
At the same time, it is true that people of ethnic minorities tend to be poorer too. They also have higher rates of unemployment as well as longer spells out of work. But the key point is that such privations are not total blockages for all. Ethnic minorities in Britain are socially mobile, not stuck.
We further know that the most reliable evidence from the Crime Survey shows racially-inspired crime to be declining while survey evidence further supports a reimagining of the country as one where you do not have to be white in order to be British. The popular misconception that 'hate crime' is rising rests on police recorded statistics that contain many false positives and are prone to being manipulated. Indeed, there is an entire cottage industry devoted to 'getting the numbers up'.
If anything, the evidence shows black people are more likely to be victims of violent crime at the hands of other black people than white racists, this being something we have been unwilling to talk about, despite so many prominent attestations that black lives matter.
What I have outlined above is a far more accurate picture of the British experience and it is something the government has been bold enough to acknowledge. The proposed policy measures show a commitment to finding out where the problems lie, although the proof of their efficacy will lie in the pudding. An architecture of state programmes is offered to foster greater support for families, as well as clamp down on racial abuse and discrimination. It is no longer true to say the government has done nothing; it has merely taken its time. Note how much more positive this is than the 'anti-racist' racially-preferential policies coming from Biden's administration.
It is standard on the political left but also some sections of the right, to tell a story of grievances remedied by state salvation. There is always some radical 'solution' that is to come, somehow, to make everything all right, only details are seldom specified and actual proposals are usually dubious measures like mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting and unconscious bias training. The government is offering an alternative version that sees a role for itself, in supporting individuals to succeed, contingent on their own agency. It is different in that it acknowledges successes too that are a consequence of British institutions, that are not damned as sites of 'institutional racism' that require politicisation and oversight from the self-appointed virtuous.
There is a political lethargy among many in this country, fuelled by the premise that things are too unjust. If the government's strategy is going to work (and let us hope it will) that preconception needs popular political challenging with a new argument that stresses those whatever real grievances there are, there are also successes. Individuals can flourish as well as flounder, contingent on their own endeavours.
