#blacklivesmatter racism is a human problem

I mean the bigger point is the horrendous inability to confront the past, teach it properly, and help those who are doing badly recognise the problem isn't skin colour and birthplace.

Thanks for posting that, but I feel like if it's news it should be in the news thread (as well). Yes it's terrible, and should be more widely known.

I think this thread is useful for a certain amount of navel-gazing, but it's pointless in the wider sphere if discussion of racism becomes corralled.

Yes, I think that will be why progress is slower in the largely white, working class towns. Less integration so it's easier to blame the "outsiders" and the feeling that "we have it bad and no-one cares". Obviously parallels with Brexit.

The Black Lives Matter UK website and fundraising page seems to have imported a lot of stuff from the US one and some of it not very well (the abolition of the police line was from the UK fundraising page for instance). There's a lot of confused messaging that people will pick up on as to why they don't support the movement (although arguably a fair chunk of them are looking for any excuse).

I feel the acknowledgement of slavery/empire will be difficult in the current generations, largely due to the lack of education around it and that a lot of focus was on how successful it was economically rather than the costs. The current protests may help with that but who knows how long it will take.

@aggi economic success for whom?? most of us have had 10 years of austerity.. or are you referring to 1980s yuppies or that industrial age 1870s when social mobility was first created, again not sure how many black people benefitted.

In the context of BLM and UK Legislation, I want to ask how much progress have we made, not is terms of wealth but equality?

The Equality Act 2010 01 October 2010 - 251 pages (David Cameron, George Osborne)

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf]

Primary purpose of consolidating, updating and supplementing the numerous prior Acts and Regulations, that formed the basis of anti-discrimination law in Great Britain, updating;

• the Equal Pay Act 1970;
  
• the Sex Discrimination Act 1975;
  - the Race Relations Act 1976;
  
• the Disability Discrimination Act 1995;
  
• the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003;
  
• the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003;
  
• the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006;
  
• the Equality Act 2006, Part 2;
  
• the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007;
  
  

Race Disparity Audit - March 2018 /58 pages (Theresa May)
[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/686071/Revised_RDA_report_March_2018.pdf]

The MacPherson Report - July 2009 /389 pages and 16 years after the murder of Stephen Lawrence - Tony Blair / Gordon Brown
[https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmhaff/427/427.pdf]

Today in Britain, we witness ongoing racist rhetoric that feeds the flames of intolerance, hatred and violence . And I am not convinced its a minority across the country, if anything its a silent majority, particularly outside London.

This is an interesting article on where Munira Mirza apparently comes from on racism--a seemingly very confused left-wing group that turned equally confused right-wing while trying to pretend to being very clever:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/fringe-1980s-communist-faction-no-10-attitude-racism-munira-mirza

All sounds pretty dire.

Absolutely spot on, from my POV, are the recent posts about the impact, direct or indirect of the BLM movement and exposure on 'not racist' white people and their struggle to acknowledge white privelege. Then again, can you and should you force a person to agree with a somewhat abstract concept they simply cannot see or feel, for example white people who might be/feel poor or disadvantaged and disenfranchised. Also, the term white privelege is pretty shit in my eyes as it deflects from the oppression /disadvantageous position on non-White people. My wife absolutely doesn't agree or believe that white privelege is a thing, regardless of my trying to explain the ideas behind it (not very well, obviously) but then again she's never felt privelege from a racial point of view and doesn't have wide experience of multi-racial comparison so who am I or anyone to tell her that SHE IS. She commented earlier that she's never been or felt racist but felt she was being asked to feel ashamed, apologetic and anxious because of her own skin colour, not through her actions, which I thought was quite interesting, and honest.

Oh, I have no intention of corralling anything. I think I mainly posted it here because of the disgusting restraint technique used, which seemed so similar to that which killed George Floyd. But yes, it could go in a number of threads.

aggi economic success for whom?? most of us have had 10 years of austerity.. or are you referring to 1980s yuppies or that industrial age 1870s when social mobility was first created, again not sure how many black people benefitted.

Slave owners, gentry, the East India Company, royalty, lords, Britain (for a certain definition of Britain), etc

The Empire was very successful for a small group of people and there are still echoes of that now.

Windrush news--all 30 recommendations of the Williams review to be 'acted on'--still glacial progress on processing cases by the sound of it. Also this strange statement from Patel:

Patel said: “I agree: the payments and the way in which payments have been made have been far too slow. I’m not apologising for that at all.

Did she mean 'excusing'?

It's all the more strange in view of Recommendation 1:

Recommendation 1 – Ministers on behalf of the department should admit that serious harm was inflicted on people who are British and provide an unqualified apology to those affected and to the wider black African-Caribbean community as soon as possible. The sincerity of this apology will be determined by how far the Home Office demonstrates a commitment to learn from its mistakes by making fundamental changes to its culture and way of working, that are both systemic and sustainable.

Anyway, in substance it seems positive, but of course you always have to be a little cautious when it comes to commitments like that, as in practice it may not turn out to be done properly.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/23/uk-government-to-act-on-all-30-windrush-recommendations

The review is here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/876336/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_LoResFinal.pdf

In terms of Financial equality, not well at all
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/20/financial-inequality-the-ethnicity-gap-in-pay-wealth-and-property

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/jun/23/white-household-income-in-uk-is-63-higher-than-black-households-ons-finds

Conclusions of both is BAME groups earn less, have less savings, receive less pension income and have lower home ownership

Saw this today and thought what the actual fuck. Seems this sort of thing is acceptable, such as flying banner over Jo Cox MP Funeral.

You look at the abuse that Iam Wright is getting on social media. In 2020, and we call ourselves civilized.

white privilege, ffs.. if you are polish, albanian, kosovan, romanian, turkish.. long list of eastern europeans you are less despised.. still despised but less so than being three generations british born and black. And those ethnic groups know it, frankly couldn't give a fcuk about BLM..

As Banksy said 'this is a white problem' so it's time to redress this, we all have our part to play. Every effort counts, change doesn't have to be radical but rather incremental. so let's be the change instead of referencing what the papers says or endless social commentary.

#actionspeakslouderthanwords.

What about clerks, engineers, stone masons, etc?

I don't want to derail, but it's important to understand that whole swathes of society benefited, not just a few niche people at the top.

I'm not going to seriously argue that a small percentage didn't benefit the most, but the economic stimulus from global trade impacted the whole fabric of our country.

Surly that's exactly why it's important to acknowledge that part of our success came at the expense of others.

That was meant to be captured under "Britain". As you say, a lot of the country did benefit from it.

It's a rabbit hole. If you look at Burnley for instance it used to be very prosperous because of the mills. However, a large part of the reason for that was cheap cotton picked by slaves in the US.

The Empire was very successful for a small group of people and there are still echoes of that now.

All British somewhat benefit from the history of empire. As distasteful as that may be.

Interestingly, for a given value of interesting, there's a lot of work into "who does better at school, who lives in poverty" stratified by ethnicity.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/compendium/economicreview/february2020/childpovertyandeducationoutcomesbyethnicity

Interesting, ta.

Nationally in higher education there's a lot of focus on outcomes, the 'attainment gap' (or degree awarding gap, or opportunity gap) between white and BAME graduates getting 2.1/1st, for example. It isn't often broken down at a more granular level and the whole thing of lumping everyone who isn't white together in one statistic often feels clumsy.

Smaller scale studies (individual institutions) show black students are most likely to leave before finishing, and the attainment gap is marked even when comparing across same economic background and previous attainment. That always throws people who are hoping they can put the outcomes down to wider societal or schooling issues, making it someone else's problem.

They also show the worst stats for entrants when looking at a combination of ethnicity and economic background are white students from the most deprived backgrounds, who seem to be coming to university less and less.

Would be interesting to know how much this varies across different institutions and areas of the country, like that school report. I know that one of my unis has a worse than average gap - with majority of students identifying as BAME (not sure if it's majority of staff but it's a lot too), whereas unis where BAME students are a small proportion they have a smaller than average gap - is it a self-selecting bias where if you're persistent/good enough to make it in, you tend to do well, or is there something else to it?

I mean. If you want to go through it all, there's a lot of stuff here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/search?q=ethnicity+and+inequality

I started looking here - https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/official-statistics/published-statistics/ - which answers some questions. Can't see it compared by institution yet, I think I'd have to find them individually.

If you want to go through it all

I don't though. I just want the answers. Is that so much to ask?

Reading some of the twitter replies to the Burnley incident shows how racist this country is, and how these people feel justified that the opinion is acceptable.

There are even disparaging comments about BLM on the Bristolpost website story about TV trucks turning up at Glastonbury site.

So much to read and take in on this thread and I am incredibly glad that it has been started, and is being discussed rather than the snippets that pop up from time to time in the news and/or US(trump) threads regardless of how relevant and insightful they may be.

My father-in-law was Jamaican and my partner is mixed-race so discussions regarding race have always been important in our household. My position had always been "well I am not racist", which was always meant as a truthful statement although I know that this stance is not good enough, and I am trying my hardest to be an ally going forwards. We have a young son who is a similar skin colour to me (pasty white) and we are both key to make sure that we educate him to the best of our ability.

I realise that the above doesn't necessarily add much to the conversation but wanted to say add my piece and say that I am behind it 100% and will try to contribute when/if I can.

Incredibly late notice, but the National Theatre is currently streaming Andrea Levy's Small Island on YouTube until tomorrow (Weds 25th @ 7pm).
^We watched it yesterday and it really is an incredible watch with all the emotions.

The answers are really not easy.

Lots of things reported by deprivation, so you have to transform it and work out how many people of different ethnicity (which isnt fixed and can change person to person with time) are in those areas.

It's a big thing. And as people have said, while the attainment and access to service might be as bad for poor white people, I'm not sure the stop and search / restraint rates are similar.

Sorry thought my last line would be obviously flippant / not serious.

Yeah, aware I'm looking at a particular thing which is "outcomes for higher education" and not the wider life picture and experience.

I got the flippancy! In a good way!
It's the kind of work I've been exposed to this past year and it's been really challenging.