The “Report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities” has just been published. The Commissioners were nearly all from BAME backgrounds and have produced a robust and fair Report. However, the Report questioned the use of the term “BAME”, among ethnic minorities, 40% said it was still useful, 36% said it was out of date and 25% didn’t know. BAME is also outdated by demographic changes, for instance, in London the white English are a minority of about 30%, although the Report didn’t raise this point.
The Report identified a class divide in which the cycle of advantage maintains a section of the population in wealth and leaves the large bulk of the population in relative poverty. The wealthy class is largely white British but the poorer class consists of large numbers of white British and other ethnic groups. This class divide causes a bias in crude statistics on disadvantage so that majority, poor white British are labelled as “white supremacists” etc. when it is the small wealthy class that actually creates the disparity that causes this analysis.
The most striking finding is that different ethnic groups had very different experiences and outcomes. Educational outcomes demonstrate this at a glance:
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Most ethnic groups had better outcomes than most British children. The rich white British group have spectacular excellent outcomes because they send their children to private schools. Within the lower classes the white British do extremely badly.
The median pay gap between ethnic groups is very small when cultural factors such as the proportion of women working is taken into account (the “adjusted” figures below).
White British – Ethnic Group pay. Positive figures = lower earnings. |
The use of “median” figures adjusts for the much higher pay of the white British upper middle classes. However, this still has a small effect so if the rich white British were removed there would probably be even less difference between UK born ethnic groups.
Ethnic groups are heavily represented in the NHS. The term “BAME” is wholly inappropriate when considering health workers because nearly half of all doctors come from non-white groups and probably more than 50% of NHS doctors are non-white-British.
The anomalously high death rate from COVID amongst non-white doctors needs investigating, especially when these are high income individuals. 95% of the doctors who died were non-white, some of whom were running the medical units where they worked.
Non-white British ethnic groups were more likely to experience hate crime than the white British:
However, because the white group massively outnumbers all of the other groups a large number of white British people are experiencing hate crimes. As an example there are about 20 times as many white people as black so if 0.2% experience hate crimes twice as many white there are 3-4 times as many white people being subject to hate crimes as black people. White people were about 8 times more likely to be the perpetrators of hate crimes than black people but when the fact that there are 20 times as many white people as black people is taken into account each white person was only half as likely or less to commit a hate crime as a black person.
An important contribution of this report was to recognise that ending racism imposes a huge burden on a majority population: “Imagine a world with just 2 groups in which both are equally prejudiced, but the minority forms just 10% of the population. When it comes to hiring, the potential prejudice faced by a minority applicant will be much greater than the potential prejudice against an applicant from the majority.”
The Report has an in-depth analysis of “stop and search” figures by ethnicity. It considered the fact that stop and search was used to prevent homicides of black people in London (72% of all London homicides). Black people were 4 times more likely to be a victim of violence than White people, and 8 times more likely to be a perpetrator in London. However, the Report concluded that this area of policing needed attention, especially given the effect of this on trust in the police.
The Report made a very important point about the under representation of ethnic minorities in the police force:
The Report identified a lack of applicants as a particular problem. This would be expected from a largely lower class population.
The section on COVID was interesting, the data suggests that some ethnic groups had ameliorated the factors that caused increased death rates when the second wave hit:
The source of the graph above suggested that it may have been the intensive dissemination of information on COVID by various agencies that caused the fall in mortality. People were dying of distrust.
Overall this was one of the fairest and most complete reports on racism in the UK that has been published.
Many of the problems that are assigned to racism are actually about class. It is a tragedy that white middle class “socialists” have been unaware that it is their classism, their rejection of the class war in favour of exploiting racial tensions, is now the cause of much of the racism that remains in the UK.
This post was originally published by the author on his personal blog: https://pol-check.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-report-on-racism.html
This was a draft version that was visible on my website. My apologies for not noticing that. The final version now replaces it.
Excellent analysis .A very useful report sadly rejected by the left
I would have thought the failure of black Caribbean boys has much to do with Marijuana usage becoming the
Norm
As African students fo appreciably better colour could not be the reason for their failure
Overall this was one of the fairest and most complete reports on racism in the UK that has been published.
I agree with the conclusions Many of the problems that are assigned to racism are actually about class. It is a tragedy that to white middle class socialists racism is too easily attributed to spurious causes.
Listening to Lord Woolley,enobled and now the first black Head of an Oxford College speaking so critically of the report I wonder if he was prouder of his achievement it would not be a more positive message to give to young black boys .Rather than encouraging resentment and victim hood .