Bristol CORE responds to the report on the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.
Dear Friends, Colleagues and Allies,
We are responding to the Government report on the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.
Bristol’s Commision on Racial Equality (CoRE) was expecting a rigorous and evidenced based report that took into account the tremendous work done over several decades by various institutions and Committees. From the Runnymede Trust, the Stuart Hall Foundation, to the McGregor Smith and Lammy reports or the recent British Academic report on Covid 19, we know that institutional racism is not about a lack of aspiration or some skewed views on so called meritocracy but about institutions that are set up in ways that perpetuate inequalities and racial discrimination. Rather than working towards ways to implement the recommendations from those studies, this new report takes us on what appears to be an opinion piece that denies intergenerational trauma, lived experiences of minority ethnic groups and that pitches various minority ethnic groups against one another.
The report defines institutional racism as “applicable to an institution that is racist or to the discriminatory processes, policies, attitudes or behaviours in a single institution” and asserts that if an institution is accused of being institutionally racist, it must be shown to have “treated an ethnic group differently to other groups because of their ethnic identity”. This understanding and definition, does not account for the ways that institutional racism works alongside intersecting inequalities.
This report implicitly denies the historical implications and legacy of structural racism within the UK. It also is an insult to the lives and livelihoods that have been lost as a result of policies that embody this dangerous discourse. It puts the responsibility of racism on to individuals and fails to recognise and account for the role of successive policies by the UK government in perpetuating racialised inequalities. It even fails to acknowledge the disproportionate impact COVID-19 had on Black, Asian and minority Ethnic communities.
The intentions of this report is supposedly to ‘change the narrative’ around racism in the country, however we were disappointed to see that the language in this report has dangerous and disempowering undertones - particularly around the transatlantic slave trade. People of African descent were trafficked and subjugated to work in plantations. Modern Britain benefited from that forced labour and it is a history that needs to be taught. The consequences of that past are racial, economic and social disparities that this Sewell report downplays.
That being said, we cannot deny the progress that has been made by various groups and the power that comes from working together irrespective of our background. More work must be done to increase equity among all and we have found that progress is often made at local levels. Bristol’s CoRE will continue to work with our local institutions, stakeholders, policy-makers and communities to ensure that we are working towards an anti-racist reality.
Professor Olivette Otele
Chair of Bristol’s Commission for Race Equality (CoRE)