Did he resign because of the report? Is the report really bad? Is it really saying the UK is not racist?
Let me give one quote from the report “Overt and outright racism persists in the UK.” Pretty clear really – not pulling punches there.
But doesn’t the report say we should stop using the term BAME. Yes it does – it says that lumping all non-whites together is wrong. And when you think about it that is a pretty obvious point there – there are some things can affect certain minorities more than others.
A couple of examples. The employment rate in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities is 20% lower than that in the Indian groups – this seems to be related to the “woman at home2 concept. Then there is the fact that Chinese ethnic groups are paid more than white British ethnic groups. The more you think about it the more insulting the term BAME starts to seem – it really means “all you lot that are non-white”.
The report says schools are doing a good job at eliminating racism, but it points out that there are issues when it comes to B – much more than AME when it comes to further education. And somebody from a Chinese background is more than twice as likely to get 3 A-levels than somebody from a white British background.
The report is far from a clean bill of health. So why are people upset?
Well the report says we are getting better, which some people dislike as being too positive.
The report says ethnic traditions can lead to different results (if women don’t work in a culture then the employment rate will be lower – so we need to think about reasons and not simple numbers).
But I think the one conclusion that has got people upset is “Too many people in the progressive and anti-racism movements seem reluctant to acknowledge their own past achievements, and they offer solutions based on the binary divides of the past which often misses the point of today’s world.”
But there is one underlying whisper I read – poverty can be more important than race.