March 31, 2021 - 11:00am
The British government’s new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report strikes a major blow against institutional wokeness. Repudiating the grievance-based meta-narrative that has defined this institutional space, it advocates a scientific, evidence-led, incrementalist approach to reducing racial and other inequalities. This marks a 180-degree turn from the Cameron and May years, where a key aim of race policy was to soften the Tories’ ostensible ‘nasty party’ image among opinion formers in the progressive media and anti-racism industry.
Wokeness, the sacralisation of historically disadvantaged racial, sexual and gender minorities, decrees that any discussion of racial inequality must dovetail with a master narrative of noble struggle by oppressed minorities and their virtuous white allies against a racist white society. It favours simplicity over complexity, ‘lived experience’ over the scientific method, and the binary ‘majority-minority’ paradigm over complex patterns of multi-ethnic interaction.
The current default narrative in elite institutions is that if there is a racial gap in any desired outcome, this is proof of institutional racism. Individual anecdotes from members of protected groups must be accepted as evidence even when it is unclear how generalisable they are. The Race Equalities report, meanwhile, argues for a more nuanced approach: accepting that discrimination exists only when confounding variables like income or region have been properly accounted for and competing explanations addressed.
The report is clear that a simplistic reporting of gaps, or a crude benchmarking of minority representation against an unadjusted national yardstick, will not drive the government’s race equality policy. Minorities are younger and more urbanised, and should be compared against their white equivalents rather than older rural whites. For instance, Covid-19 does not disproportionately kill minorities, but does so when you adjust for age.
Yet to discern whether racism is involved requires controlling for minorities’ disproportionate employment in frontline services and their multi-generational housing and higher rate of pre-existing health conditions. Instead of crude racial aggregates, the commissioners seek a new scientific emphasis on multivariate analysis of individual-level data to isolate discrimination from confounding factors such as poverty or urbanity.
The report accepts that structural racism – ‘racism without racists’ – can exist, but that the theory must be testable and measurable rather than acting as a shadowy, ethereal force encoded in society’s DNA and people’s collective unconscious. For instance, as the report notes, structural racism exists if everyone is equally prejudiced but one group makes up 90% of the population and the other 10%, in which case discrimination falls disproportionately on the minority. In which case, structural racism can be readily discerned from surveys or experiments which deploy a scientific framework.
The upshot of all this is a report that stresses Britain’s relative success compared to its own past and that of other countries. There is a preference for evidence-led policy which replaces quotas or targets with ‘nudges’ such as name-blind CVs or family-friendly policies that can address all forms of hidden inequality, not just race. There is an openness to criticism of dominant paradigms, allowing that even CV studies reporting lower minority callback rates for foreign names have been criticised for conflating class, race and culture. The new emphasis, whether in health, education, policing or employment, is on what works and what doesn’t.
Diversity training that focuses solely on whites discriminating against others, and ignores the ample evidence we have that whites do not discriminate more than other groups, is to be retired. Unconscious bias training, which has been shown to be ineffective or even counterproductive, is criticised as the virtue-signalling it is:
The report’s shift of narrative from a presumption of national guilt to one of a country that has achieved much, and in which all citizens, regardless of background, have agency, represents a significant change of emphasis. Building minority resilience, celebrating progress, placing remaining problems in international context and tackling remaining racism through incremental, evidence-led, change throws down the gauntlet to the totalising victim-driven narrative of the anti-racism industry:
While not discounting racism, the report rebalances the picture with critical context, explaining that differences within races are greater than those between, and all groups are responsible for biases against all groups. Differences in group culture, economic capital at the time of migration, settlement area and other factors affect group outcomes more than racism.
Beyond this, the report outlines an optimistic vision that departs dramatically from the pessimistic tale of a perpetually racist country locked in a zero-sum struggle for resources. What defines success, as the report notes, is a positive-sum optimisation of outcomes among groups of all kinds, not a narrow maximisation of outcomes for racial minorities.
While there is no room for complacency, the report establishes, for the first time, a clear need for guardrails to check anti-racist overreach so as to achieve an optimum outcome. As the authors warn: ‘In a sporting match, we care about penalties, but we also care about referees who call too many fouls or players who claim they have been fouled when they have not been.’
Specifically, calling false positives sows resentment among members of the majority who feel their group has been unfairly slighted while undermining a sense of agency and national solidarity among minorities, who may be overly sensitised to racism by activists, erecting it as a larger barrier to their flourishing than it actually is.
When racism comes to be defined so broadly as to encompass any speech that offends the purported sensibilities of the most sensitive minority individual, this shuts down vital discussions around crime, education, health, immigration and national identity.
We shouldn’t underestimate the magnitude of this report. The willingness of the government’s official equalities commission to stand against claims made on behalf of the identity Left’s sacred category of historically disadvantaged minorities strikes at the epicentre of wokeness.
This should prompt a hard reset of diversity and equality programmes across government, redefining best practice in the private sector and thereby spelling the end of the ineffable march of gap-based reasoning and grievance meta-narratives in this country.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor at the University of Buckingham, and author of the upcoming Taboo: Why Making Race Sacred Led to a Cultural Revolution (Forum Press UK, June 6)/The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism (Bombardier Books USA, May 14).
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SubscribeMany people who are active in the BLM movement (and its accompanying industries) appear to be hugely dissapointed that racism is apparently not as rampant as they had hoped.
Prof Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, said the report was not a “genuine effort to understand racism in Britain” and “Dr Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said she felt “deeply, massively let down” by the report” BBC
So it won’t make any difference.
You beat me to it. Prof Adams goes on to say, “It’s complete nonsense. It goes in the face of all the actual existing evidence. This is not a genuine effort to understand racism in Britain. This is a PR move to pretend the problem doesn’t exist”.
When this hits the television, there will be a long line of interviewees who say that the report is rubbish. There will be nothing positive to come out of it.
(If the report was right, there would be no need of a Chair in Black Studies and Prof Andrews would be out of a job.)
Exactly. There is an entire industry that depends on the existence of racism, real or imagined, in the UK. As we all know, it is almost totally imagined or drummed up.
The ‘Black Experience’ in the UK is a very different one from that in the USA.
It is up to Prof Adams to deliver that evidence
… but if there was a Chair in White Studies it would be considered racist. At least we’re fighting back against this pernicious victimisation culture and allowing a discussion – just what wokists don’t want.
not a ‘genuine effort to understand racism in Britain’
Let’s be honest, any report which didn’t come up with an unequivocal finding of institutional racism in every area of UK life would be criticised.
I find it interesting to note that that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has only one white member.
Just imagine the wailing if it had – heaven forbid!! – more than one white member.
On a somewhat not entirely unrelated note, i foresee a summer of looting and arson to come. Are there any rubbish bins left unburnt in public spaces? Public rubbish bins are the single most persecuted group of inanimate objects in diverse urban societies.
Pushback from the Runnymede Trust is the mark of a job well done.
Echoing the words of MRD, ‘they would say that, wouldn’t they’?
“deeply, massively let down” because the findings don’t accord with my views?
…even before I’ve read it
Their projection of the reality of their own incompetent work on to the Sewell report is so predictable.
The only thing that is institutionally racist is their own organisations or departments.
So, she felt left down because the report did not bear out her prejudice. Color me shocked, but I do hope this is a sign that more effective policies are on the way in. We’ll see…
The report was written by the wrong sort of BAME, don’t you know: one that looks at the evidence and thinks for itself.
I respectfully disagree. It will make a difference. Hucksters like Andrews and Begum are being sidelined, and they know it, and this is why they’re angry.
I hope you’re right, but I’ve a feeling that you’re not.
But at last someone has the courage and depth of experience to try and counter the rampant woke agenda. Worth it for that, if nothing else – these wokists must be rebuffed and this is a start. Hooray for Bojo doing it – no-one else has had the guts.
All genuine racism in the home of the English people is anti-white.
You are right, though I am slightly disappointed by your spelling.
Also, I am disappointed that many of the comments here (though not yours) seem to relish the reaction from the report’s critics. They would rather win another battle in this culture war, or at least blame the opposing side, than seek future harmony.
Sorry about that, I’m not a stellar speller but my heart’s in the right place.
Did you mean ‘steller spellar’?
Those who are objecting to this report — such as Professor Kehinde Andrews and Dr Halima Begum (see Weyland Smith’s comment below) — personify one of the problems that this report seeks to address. They are activists whose professional existence rests on presuppositions that gestate and give birth to various manifestations of identity politics.
I was born in 1950, and am fully persuaded that identity politics is the most pernicious body of thought to have arisen in my lifetime. It places its poisonous toe on something that might well be a genuine problem (e.g. prejudice of one kind or another), claims to provide solutions, achieves precisely the opposite by fostering division, and then claims that the problem therefore needs all the more attention — which is how the platform that feeds the power of its propagators is built. Its evil is irredeemable!
Fortunately Dr Sewell can see through it, to what lies beneath. The report’s concentration on evidence rather than on anecdote and on unstated ideological presuppositions is most welcome. Ideas matter. You counter bad ideas with good ideas, fortified by evidence and rhetoric that will support them.
Reading newspaper reports about the Commission’s report this morning I felt strange stirrings of something resembling national pride. Finally I was reading statements of common sense with regard to race in Britain: descriptions of a country I actually recognise and know rather than the bitter, negative and divisive narrative that has dominated over the past year(s).
So well done to Tony Sewell for his excellent work and to Eric Kaufmann for this excellent article.
Of course, the posts above are correct; the racist grievance industry is going to have the mother of all hissy fits.
If Andrews hates it, I guess the estimable Mr Sewell must have got it about right.
Kehinde Andrews, Academe’s Chief In-House Racist & Race Baiter. And even better, funded by us taxpayers.
Did Sewell look at anti-white racism? Did he ask whether the imposition on the native British of endless millions of foreign peoples and the dehumanisation of native British dissent was racist?
As a young innocent lad in the 70s and 80s I never dreamt that I would one day my own country would be a race-obsessed society.
In fact on some measures we are much more race-obsessed than say, South Africa or Germany in the past. They thought they knew they answers – we have not even formulated the questions.
We are often told that we have benefited from the immigration we have had. Leaving aside how dubious that generalisation is even from the point of view of economics, it is mass immigration that has brought the race obsession, which is a terrible mental problem for society as a whole.
All true. But although the report should prompt reform and reappraisal, the question remains: will it? The bureaucracies which should have addressed themselves coolly and impartially to these issues have degenerated into vested interests, with no intention of declaring themselves redundant. Universities have slipped into habits of simple minded outrage and far too many of the younger generation imagine that they are involved in some sort of crusade. Finally, habits of resentment, over-sensitivity, intolerance and retreat are already deeply embedded in much of society. The test case, in an such a situation, is humour. Can we laugh about these matters? Can laughter itself be rescued from the abominable left wing belief that it represents “power” or “punching”? Can we not recall that laughter represents a response to the absurd, and that “the absurd” is one way of recognising a variety of mishaps – disproportion, exaggeration, incongruity, vulgarity – and that injustice itself, being a form of all these things – can be the cause of mirth? Once we have recovered this human centrality, this vital form of “balance”, we will be on the road to recovery.
‘In Sickness and in Health’: Series 1: Episode 3: Cue the arrival of ‘Winston’ the new black and gay care worker for the Garnetts. Over-the-top, and still very funny, followed by the interview with Eammon Hughes who played Winston, saying how much he enjoyed working with Warren Mitchell and Dandy Nicholls, plus he never viewed the series as ‘waycist’, more like an opportunity to portray just how ridiculous people like ‘Alf’ were.
It’s like the possibly most maligned program of the 70’s – Love Thy Neighbor.
I fully support that the lowest levels of hell aren’t enough for both it and the writers responsible on the basis that it’s probably one of the least funny “sitcoms” ever made but it couldn’t have tried harder to ridicule the racism and cultural battles which were prevalent at that time.
This feels like a good start. The grievance industry will resist, with all the tools at its disposal, but the government now has an evidence based referral point for policy development. It will still be a long fight but it seems we have a last recognised the issue.
Now how about a similar investigation into sexism.
For the perpetually aggrieved and offended, the supply of genuine racism is failing to meet the demand. It is almost beyond reason how allegedly learned individuals completely ignore the individual and that person’s strengths, failings, or decisions. Any bad result can only be the work of an outside malevolent force. It’s more than condescending; it’s dehumanizing. And it is intentional.
From the report above “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.”
But what about genetically, are all really made the same? Does seeing the world really make us think that? Does one get canceled for asking that?
I would say it is more than that. If the world has 200 nations, and there were 200 Australian Island/continents to colonize (and one to be left to the natives there) how would the people on the race-equities say the results would work out with one for each peoples, and 200 years passing? 201 identical societies? Because that is what the mad racist industry says. Equality of opportunity must mean equal outcome, and Thus – as there is not equal outcome in the world, there must be some with held opportunity, and others given extra.
I would say go to the world IQ tables, which a search will give a number of them, and those will give a rough idea of what to expect. Culture next. But the people above may not mention this. It is apostasy.
“Prof Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University” would have a very hard time setting up a professional sports team, and more so a professional Chess team. The reality he pushes just would not work in the real reality.
“For the perpetually aggrieved and offended, the supply of genuine racism is failing to meet the demand.”
That is why the definition of “racism” has been stretched beyond breaking point. You’re white, and you disagree with a black person: you’re a racist. Doesn’t matter that you disagree with the argument, not the person proposing it, you’re still a racist.
Unless you disagree with a black person who says that this country’s not as bad as a lot of others, or that things have improved in the last few decades. You’re allowed to disagree with him then, and even encouraged to use racial slurs like “Uncle Tom”.
I am convinced that the world has gone utterly mad, and it caught the psychosis from American universities.
The Commission has a membership of ten including the Chairman (black) . It has one white member. The other nine members are from ethnic backgrounds and four are women. All the members are eminent in their fields and include Scientists a Surgeon and every one is accustomed to looking at hard data .
This is an important report and the knee j**k of those who reject it -when they have not even had time to understand its 264 pages – including Starmer -is extraordinarily biased.
A lot of people, especially the losers otherwise known as white saviours, seem to have a giant problem with minorities whos views don’t fit what they think they should be, and that there are many minorities who know racism is a thing and know it will never go away but are strong enough not to let it get to them, which is really how people should be raised, not to be weak as if you let it get to you the people who are the racists will win
then again I think minorities by a ratio of 2:1 thought the BLM protests did more harm than good, that should really have been a sign that their patronising and outright wrong approach is off, but no, all about them
It doesn’t fit their (BLM supporter’s) agenda and I fear never will, they’ll be burning the report on the streets as soon as the weather picks up
It’s been disheartening to see detractors of this report accuse the authors (almost entirely from racial minority backgrounds) as effectively being uncle toms, inciting a no-true-Scotsman approach to their scientific and holistic approach to data analysis as compared to the overly parsimonious “it’s racist” shouts they are fond of.
The truth is, the British public, regardless of race, ethnicity, background, class or any other measure of social identification, know, when compared to almost everywhere else in the world, the UK is a bastion of tolerance and liberal attitudes. You won’t see people being institutionally persecuted for the colour of their skin, their sexuality and/or gender, or their political affiliation, in the UK in 2021. Unless you’re one of the aforementioned detractors, in which case purity of the cause is all that really matters.
The identity politics pantomime season is just about over. Kindly leave the stage, and, ladies and gentleman, please welcome on stage 21st century neoliberalism’s real victims – young, working-class, white and Caribbean males. Let’s get rid of woke ‘progressive’ education and start getting these youngsters up to speed with some proper teaching in all subjects. And their useless parents need to get with the programme, too.
You need to add, in employment opportunities, white middle class males over the age of 50. Statistically more likely to die before retirement age than gain another well paid full time role.
My guess is that means they do not add sufficient value to a job. In what I do, professional tradesman, that is where you become the most valuable because you will have mastered the work. It takes a lot of years to really become a real tradesman, more than you would think, as many as the university educated kinds of work, only you have not fallen behind the times or become entitled as your production is always quantified by results.
Unfortunately Even Zero hours Positions,have Units ”you” must complete on Unconscience bias &Thought ! so Orwell was only off by 37 years.Im glad im nearly 70 and away from all this nonsense Danger to democracy is from the ”right” Police & crime bill ”left”& ‘Liberal ”cancel culture at universities;;.
Our entire media is stuffed with people committed to pushing the notion of structural racism, and I’m afraid it will take more than a mere report to counteract that.
you are hoping to counteract what is essentially a religion. These people are zealots. No volume of facts will change their minds.
I have seen comments several times from different people saying that the black lives Marxists made things worse for the ethnic minorities not better.
I tend to agree, I am much more angry after seeing our monuments to our heroes threatned and vandalized and our flag attacked on the Cenotaph all for something which happened in another jurisdiction over which we have no control since about 1776!
Marxism always makes things worse. It’s all about power. It plays one group against another. BLM cares nothing for black lives in Africa, or anywhere for that matter.
Of course if racism is not rampant quite a lot of very well paid jobs in academia and the grievance sector -will not be needed.
Professors get around 100 grand and a super pension plus other earnings. Nice money from just shouting racism at every social issue.
Words are nice, but they are just words. How about something concrete, repealing the state sanctioned discrimination that is the equality act for a start.
Good summary – anything that helps to disarm the industry that thrives on pedalling false racism to the naive element among the woke is a step in the right direction.
Any report that said other than “The British, and in particular the English, are the most racist people on Earth and the UK is a terrible, awful country” was going to be slated by the left.
And if you wander over to the Grauniad and see the rage you won’t be surprised.
If the report does have things wrong, factually, then I hope it gets slated for it and revised appropriately. But I think a lot of people just won’t want to swallow the message that there are a lot of confounding factors and it’s really not a clear cut case of a racist state and racist country.
Or at least, as the report said – “we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”, which is somewhat short of a whitewash of everything, as the left seem to think it must be.
The system was never deliberately rigged against the foreign colonisation. It has always been anti-native and anti-white.
That’s a pretty bold and somewhat unsupportable assertion there. Always? Back to the Bronze Age?
Always within the time-span of non-white immigration into our home, ie, since 22nd June 1948. But I guess you knew that all along.
Wow, I did just that, and I wasn’t surprised. The vitriol coming from the comments section is astounding. I wonder what world those people live in?
They live in Guardianland, its a “safe space” for nutters where their every prejudice is pandered too.
They live in a world where they put on their blinkers, open their morning papers and set their brains to full wash cycle
OMG, what are The Gruniad, The Indescribable, the BBC, Channel 4, et al going to do now??? If shown to be correct, their whole raison d’etre will cease to be. The possibilities regarding ongoing employment at these places are just too horrible to even contemplate. Crikey, they may have to go back to the bad old days of reporting on the news. Poor Owen, Yasmin, and company. Will an existential crisis grip their collective psyche? Don’t hold your breath…..
They’re already in deep denial. The Guardinista’s will be clutching their pearls until the cows come home over this.
Every IQ study I’ve read comes to the same conclusion: Asians 105, ‘Whites’ 100, Hispanics 85, Sub-Saharan Blacks 70. Are there stupid Asians and brilliant Blacks? Of course. Are we created equally? No.
“Nothing is more unequal than equality itself”
Thank God. But it says what everyone already knew.
And… calls of the report being white privilege in 10-9-8-7—
Then – watch it disappear down the memory hole.
But brick by brick, we can dismantle this odious house.
I saw a 15 year old black lad with his older brother saying how he always wore patterned clothing because he was terrified of being dressed in dark colours and in a locality of a serious crime like armed robbery and the perpetrators were identified as black by witnesses. His brother was firm, they truly believed that the system was rigged and they’d be convicted.
He wasn’t a 15 year old who should be acting a bit daft with his mates. He looked very depressed.
The fact is, the perception, was real to them and it was fear. Is the constant focus on institutional racism and rhetoric around you are black and everything is. potentially racist literally just as terrifying.
I honestly don’t know whether they are right to be scared or whether they are scared and they shouldn’t be because that is a baseless narrative or somewhere in between. But it doesn’t matter because those boys were fearful of being misidentified and then subject to what they believe was a racist legal process. Either way, it’s time to stop this blanket approach and find out what’s really going on for those lads and their peers. If we have real evidence of a real problem, we can tackle it proper;ly but people say the Crown is institurionally racist whilst forgetting that the duty of care applies to the 4 staff who left Princess M household’s employ because of alleged bullying. As a former employment law specialist, I would pursue an investigation with ex employees and consider suspending said princess on full pay if the allegations were potential gross misconduct, which potentially, they were given people left. Bullying is just as terrible as racism, and all races have bullies. The allegations are unproven on both sides and let’s not forget she has £25 million the Queen gave to the couple 2 or so years ago to keep them treading water. Technically, i think her employment status is casual as and when so no employment contract. So is the Palace racist or would HSE and subsequent tribunal expect the palace take action, if the bullying was current? Absolutely. There’s more to the story than just labelling institution is racist.
But I am worried that those lads are terrified of being falsely accused. That’s something we should be acting on not as both aides, but we are British or English citizens or Welsh w/e of this country and I want 15 year olds to worry about 15 year old things, having the first summer where you’re starting to move from child to young adult and all the excitement and mishaps and teenage mayhem that we all got up to. Yes even you, don’t lie.
But I am worried that those lads are terrified of being falsely accused.
Why are they terrified? Because a variety of race hustlers has told them to be. Because a pack of social warriors has grossly misrepresented reality. There is no “both sides” here. One side is dedicated to instilling this fear. The other is called racist for calling the fear unjustified.
I think they are rightly terrified as I would be in their position, not because of racism but because a very small but high profile number of their peers are acting in a manner which puts everyone else at risk.
Precisely. File it under the heading ‘Stop and search little white haired old ladies for concealed weapons’. Yes it is wrong and yes they have every right to feel victimised because of their colour; but also yes its mainly their colour that’s committing these crimes in this particular area. If me saying this makes me a racist (which I will argue I am most certainly not) then so be it call me one. Time to face facts and not stand there rubbing our hands together about this subject, hiding our heads in the sand solves nothing.
But I am worried that those lads are terrified of being falsely accused.
Why are they terrified? Because a variety of people has told them to be. Because those people have grossly misrepresented reality and they have done so intentionally.
There is no “both sides” here. One side is dedicated to instilling this fear. The other is called racist for calling the fear unjustified.
I have not read the report. Having said that, this is but the beginning, for the infiltration of critical social justice ideology is also manifest in pedagogic institutions such as museums and libraries and legacy charities etc. Indeed, the notion of “lived experience” is also grounded on a false notion of subjective interpretation being the arbiter of the nature of a social interaction. This appears to be eschewed in this report but is still found as the underlying doctrine in non crime hate incidences etc.
‘Lived experience’ is basically something you can use to cherry pick to fit your conclusion, any serious study would ignore that over data based approach
I would like to say something but am being deleted from the site
Its happening more and more I fear Vikram.
Lovely echo chamber. Could not agree more with all the comments, above and below the line.
Lovely echo chamber.
Lovely echo chamber.
Lovely echo chamber.
Seems fabulous. What’s the catch?
Half way through this sludge I had a strong suspicion I was reading the work of an academic. Sure enough.
Could we now have Tony Sewell on Winston Churchill?
Thank you Dr Sewell and your committee for taking such a brave step.
Perhaps racial integration has reached a point of satchuration where governmental intervention can have no further effect. After all many have problems living with their own family members so how will they get on with those who are not blood relatives or the same ethnic origins.
This cheered me right up. Maybe the UK is not going to hell in an American handcart after all
Don’t hear many fans of the ‘report’ mentioning Windrush — a catastrophe visited upon British citizens; it follows from a ‘hostile environment’ designed by two home secretaries to induce ecstasy in their supporters.
The greatest confidence trick since the really big one, the Resurrection!
These people are dangerous fantasists and should be disciplined accordingly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja8uFCFzZPE&t=1843s&ab_channel=Dr.JonathanMcLatchie
I thought the really big one was Marx and :
“The proletarians have nothing to loose but their chains.”
And the new one about to beat even that, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” Charles Schwab, World Economic Forum
Silver & Bronze, but Gold still goes to the Nazarine.
Hail Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea!