Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis - Review by John Root

Findings from the Evidence for Equality National Survey

Written by Rev John Root, and republished from his blog 'Out of Many, One People'

This report gained national attention through Diane Abbot’s aggrieved response to Tomiwa Owolade’s suggestion that other ethnic groups fared worse than Black Caribbean people. Appropriately so, since this report is a classic (and as I will argue, deeply flawed) exposition of the ‘orthodox’ academic understanding of race which is also central to Abbot’s lifelong understanding but which is now increasingly contested by Owolade and other advocates of the need for a ‘new narrative on race’.

A ‘theoretically informed analysis’?

To the Report’s credit, it sets out very clearly its theoretical underpinning (pp 2-6), setting out the following positions:

* Ethnicity is ‘a way of labelling and grouping people that has been devised by society throughout long histories of social disaggregation’, which leads to placement on ‘a hierarchical scale’ (p 2). So, the only relevant factor for ethnic groups is that of an external and seemingly malignant society. From the start by definition it is ruled out that the internal characteristics of ethnic groups might have any significance.

* ‘Inequalities can be seen as the inevitable consequences of (imperialist, racist, capitalist and patriarchal) societies operating on the premise that one’s security comes at the expense of other’s insecurity; one’s power and privilege come at the expense of others’ marginalisation’ (p 4). That is, (malign) society is inevitably a zero-sum game.

* Focus on equality of opportunity must give way to focus on inequality of outcome, ‘stemming from the premise that understanding differential outcomes is the starting point for understanding the mechanisms – processes of racial injustice - that cause them’ (p 5) The argument then is perfectly circular – racial injustice produces differential outcomes which are caused by racial injustice. (White) society’s racism is held to be the only player in the game. No other explanations of unequal outcomes are to be considered. In itself a racist assumption.

* Consequently, ‘we take the position that racism is . . . a root cause of ethnic inequalities’. Leading on to the absolutist dogma that ‘Inequalities do not arise from the inherent properties of ethnic groupings’ (p 5).

Thus by page 6 the Report’s conclusions are already there in embryo, and the exclusion of any attention to ‘the inherent properties of ethnic groupings’ inevitably distorts its conclusions.

What the analysis ignores.

But the following ‘inherent properties’ in reality do significantly affect outcomes, notably:

* Pre-migration history.

The report makes one reference to this. It is uncomfortable with the title of the 1997 report on ‘Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage’ because the diversity reflected ‘the emerging success . . most notably of those Indian people who had initially settled in East Africa’ (p 200). But if the success of an ethnic group can be attributed to their pre-migration experience, why can not the present struggles of ethnic groups also be seen as the downstream consequences of their pre-migration situation. Substantial proportions of migrants from Sylhet, Mirpur and Jamaica came from poor rural communities. Is it realistic to think that the impact of educational and other forms of deprivation would be wiped out on passing through immigration? There have been widespread and commendable attempts to rectify the situation, but the fact remains that there are clear and observable links between the life situations of ethnic groups prior to migration and their-present day contours in Britain.

Our local hospital has a board with photos of staff members. At the top are the senior staff, mainly white. Underneath those in maintenance and services, almost entirely non-white. A clear, visual illustration of institutional racism? Or a reflection that those at top levels thirty years ago had the benefit of a good education in Britain; whilst those at the lower levels often arrived here in the past twenty years speaking very little English?

* Differences between ethnic groups.

Since white racism is the only factor at play then it follows that differences between ethnic groups are of no consequence. All we need to know is that they are all equally victims. Therefore there is no explanatory mechanism available to make sense of different outcomes. Why are experiences of racial discrimination at the hands of the police almost 50% more frequent for African Caribbean and Any Other Black Background people as opposed to Black Africans (p 60)? Similarly, whilst Black Africans have an unusually high level of trust in Parliament, African Caribbeans have an even lower level of trust than the distrusting white British (p 174). The possibility that broad-brushed behavioural differences could be an explanation is simply not to be considered.

* Differences in culture and family patterns.

Amongst several dismissive references to the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (or Sewell Report) is its emphasis on ‘individual, cultural and group deficits’ (p 209). The accusatory word ‘deficit’ flags up that this is a no go area; stray into it and you are a racist. But of course the evidence is overwhelming both that there are enormous differences between cultures, and that, unsurprisingly, they lead to different outcomes. In particular this applies to patterns of parenting. ‘Adolescents from fatherless homes are three times more likely to be incarcerated by the age of 30 than those from intact families’. ‘Children aged 5 to 10 years old are nearly three times more likely to have mental health issues living with a lone parent and twice as likely with cohabiting parents, compared to living with married parents’ (from Coalition for Marriage: Evidence on the Benefits of Marriage). We have no reason to believe that this cross-cultural evidence would not also apply to the two-thirds of African Caribbean children grow up without a father in the home, and who will consequently experience a wide range of educational, employment and civic disadvantages. By telling us that consideration of ‘cultural deficits’ is out of court we are to be simply prohibited from considering a substantial source of one ethnic group’s experience of inequality in our society.

The contradictions of the analysis.

The consequence of this dogmatic exclusion of a very wide range of explanatory factors means that the report inevitably stumbles over the evidence. At several points the report is flummoxed to note people from ethnic minorities having very positive attitudes to life in Britain. ‘Despite continuous experience of disadvantage, most ethnic minority people report higher levels of trust in national, regional and local governments compared to White British respondents. We do not find evidence of political alienation of minority ethnic people’ (p 186). ‘It is striking . . . that ethnic minority people in Britain – people who have been racialised and minoritized within everyday contexts – remain strongly affiliated to a British identity’ (p 207). (Both sets of italics mine). Mercifully the report doesn’t tell us that they are victims of ‘false consciousness’ but it is unwilling to acknowledge any redeeming features in British society that causes people to be glad to live here.

Related to this apparent contentedness with life in Britain is that during COVID ‘Levels of anxiety and depression were lower among people in the Black African, Chinese, White Eastern European and Any Other Asian groups compared with the White British group’ (p 206). So too ‘Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian people were significantly more likely to report feelings of belonging to their local area than White British people’ (p 205). Because of the reports implicit assumption that agency (a word it never uses) only belongs to white people, then when ethnic minorities have poor outcomes it is racism inflicted on them, when white people have poor outcomes it is because of what they do. During COVID Bangladeshis suffered a high level of incidence, in part the consequence of living in crowded multi-generational homes; at the same time the White British suffered from loneliness and depression. Both groups, that is, suffered the consequences of their choice of preferred living arrangements. Yet it is held that for Bangladeshis the negative aspect of COVID spread was the result of racism; for White British people the negative aspects stemmed only from their choice of isolated living. (Should this not be called a ‘cultural deficit’?)

The report then is conflicted about whether to tell a good story or a bad story. We have noted above positive minority ethnic responses to life in Britain. This is expressed most strongly in the conclusion to the excellent and informative chapter on ‘Ethnic Identities’: ‘We see that the overwhelming majority of people across (almost) all ethnic groups feel a strong sense of belonging to the national community. Furthermore, it seems that having a strong attachment to one’s ethnic identity often goes hand in hand with the strong sense of belonging to British society’ (p 52).

However the report’s fundamental assumption that Britain is a racist society inclines it to play up the bad story. That many people from ethnic minorities have suffered from racism is incontestable and means that racism is still a serious issue that needs addressing in our society. However to be told that ‘47% of ethnic minority people have experienced racial discrimination in at least one setting’ (p 54) (apparently throughout their lives) implies also that a majority have never experienced racism.

So, a disappointing analysis.

The report, then, could provide a nuanced account of racism and inequality in Britain (which in fact the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disadvantage, aka Sewell did), but the report’s ‘theoretically informed analysis of the causes of these inequalities’ (p 209) means that evidence must fit the theory (which in indicating the reality of racism it often does) but other evidence must be placed beyond serious consideration and simply ignored when it fails to fit. The big question raised two years ago by the ‘Sewell v Runnymede debate’ as to whether ethnic inequalities are caused solely by societies racism (Runnymede) or whether other factors such as culture also play a part (Sewell) is simply ignored in this analysis. Dogma insists that society is entirely to blame.

Perhaps because of its omissions and contradictions the report ends on a downbeat note, referring to ‘The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice’ (Meer 2022) which speaks of ‘the likely failure’ of the project (p 210). If this is an ‘imperialist, racist, capitalist and patriarchal’ society then what else can you expect, apart from the unlikelihood of a full-scale, totalising socialist revolution. Short of that we plough on with ‘informed critical analysis . . . to support the transformation of institutions, broader policy and society’. But in fact, if you take away the report’s critical lenses there is cause not only for some pessimism but also optimism. Yes, we really do have a ‘racialised and minoritised’ Prime Minister!

Glenn Loury, the conservative, black professor of Economics and Sociology at Brown University recalls a meeting of academic sociologists, to whom he made the taunt that nobody but academic sociologists could think in unimportant that two-thirds of black Americans grew up without a father in the home. This report was produced by academic sociologists.

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John Root is a retired Anglican clergyman, living in Tottenham. He has been vice-principal of a Cambridge theological college and was for thirty years vicar of an ethnically ’super-diverse’ church in Wembley. He has also lectured part-time in early colonial history. His wife is Indian, from Malaysia and they have an adult son. You can read more of his work here.