The View from the Top

© Guardian 

The U.K. government’s commission on race equality produced a report that concluded that institutional racism was no longer a thing in Britain, and Britain is an exemplar nation for race equality and integration.  It should probably be enough to delve into the membership of the commission to roundly discredit its findings and its situational blindness. However, this is not the season for picking low lying fruit. Let’s take a good look at the world according to this group of astute social historians. 

The report asserts that people from minority ethnic groups have an equal chance of success as long as they work hard. Note that it says equal rather than greater chance. This clearly takes no account of generational wealth. It does however, play up to the racist trope that as long as they keep their heads down and do as they are told people of colour will do just fine. The nature of the British honours system serves to further to entrench inequality and exclusion amongst minorities. Titles bestow status and access on holders and these are mostly passed on to cronies and cohorts of the majority White political establishment.

Unfortunately, the reverie about the sweet life minorities are living in the U.K. is broken by studies showing that Black youths are three times as likely to be unemployed than their White compatriots, and the grieving mother of a lost Black boy whose mother has complained that her initial reports of him being missing were not taken seriously by the police before he was found dead. The Windrush scandal still blights the lives of Black Britons.

There are some simple truths that have to be faced no matter what perspective one chooses to look at institutional racism from. In 2021 people of colour are still facing discrimination and violence at the hands of institutions and individuals. The legacy of racism in this country has generational reverberations through Black communities. It has created communities steeped in poverty and deprivation. A consequence of this has been that in some communities of colour people have internalised the racism they have endured. Some people do not see themselves as being able to succeed, or even survive, just by following the rules. So we have low achievement in education, and often a derisory attitude towards regular employment.

Great Britain has not solved the problem that is racism; and it really doesn't have cause to pat itself on the back. There is still a lot to be done, and a lot of people suffering on the margins of society. There is a place for people of colour in the UK and they have made, and continue to make, tremendous contributions to their communities and society as a whole. However, if your knee is on my neck it would be impossible for you to see or recognise my pain and suffering.

Minority Policing

One major disappointment I had with Obama's tenure as president of the United States was the fact that he did not do anything concrete to address police procedures in regards to dealing with minorities or reverse the increasing militarisation of the police force and law and order mentality. The culture of suspicion and profiling of minorities can't be resolved overnight but more could have been done to address the establishment tolerance for the use of lethal force against unarmed minorities.

The recent case in Chicago of the police shooting dead a heroic Black security guard who had foiled an attempted armed assault yet again raises issues about how the police are conditioned to respond to Black people. This wasn't even a case of mistaken identity. The police didn't see the assailant they were there to apprehend they just saw someone who they assumed was an assailant for no  reason other than his skin colour. This is further illustrated by the case of the police officer who shot a man in his own home and claimed she mistook him for an intruder after mistaking his apartment for hers!

There have been recent suggestions in the UK for the police to be allowed to require a lower standard of suspicion to conduct 'stop and search' checks. This is mainly targeted at tackling knife crime amongst young Black men. The supposition here is that it would be legitimate to stop almost any Black man because there is a reasonable chance that he may be armed with a knife. This ignores the fact that the proportion of Black men involved knife crime is probably too small to even add up to a whole number. The Met's inability to develop intelligence networks within minority communities is a reflection of how they relate to such communities. It also might be an unintended consequence of how the Met treats such intelligence sources when they do come forward. This sort of oppressive approach to tackling demographic groups is exactly what happens in totalitarian and fascist states.

ⒸGorrellart.com

Undoubtedly there are some good police officers and some excellent examples of community policing but there is a toxic culture in law enforcement when it comes to the perception of minority groups. This includes how they treat members of the public and fellow police officers from minority groups.

A radical and drastic programme of reform is desperately needed not only to address institutional racism in law enforcement but also to redress a culture of fear and apprehension in the perception of and attitudes adopted towards minority groups. At some point it needs to be instilled in law enforcement that there are no circumstances in which excessive force is an appropriate response when dealing with unarmed and defenceless people from minority groups. It certainly isn't a way to serve or protect them. It can only lead to alienation which creates a vicious circle of fear, overreaction and tragic consequences.