UK provides ‘model’ for racial equality, government report says, but critics call it a ‘whitewash’

Name: Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-03-31T12:48:19.000Z
Description: Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak

Report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was ordered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government after protests last year

It concluded geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion were more significant factors than the existence of racism

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Black Lives Matter protesters march through Notting Hill in London last year. Photo: AP

Reuters

Published: 8:48pm, 31 Mar 2021Updated: 9:15pm, 31 Mar 2021

Britain should be seen as a “model for other white-majority countries” but more still needs to be done, a review into race inequality said on Wednesday, a conclusion that provoked fury from critics who branded it a “whitewash”.

The report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was ordered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government after widespread Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests last summer, triggered by the death of George Floyd in police custody in the United States.

“Put simply we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities,” Tony Sewell, the commission’s chairman, said in a foreword to the report.

“The impediments and disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism. Too often ‘racism’ is the catch-all explanation, and can be simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined.”

Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak

The BLM movement, which saw tens of thousands of Britons join demonstrations, caused Britain, like other Western countries, to look more closely at race relations and its colonial past, with campaigners demanding action to end structural bias.