Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities

[BobKowalski]

The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has now been published.

You may be astonished to learn that the Govt did a press release prior to the publication of the report, so that the media could splash the Govt‘s opinion on the report without anyone else being able to counter it. Yeah, I was ‘shocked‘ too.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf

 

[BobKowalski]

Half way through and overriding impression is that the report authors claim one thing then cite stats or reports that seem to contradict their claims.

 

[metalblue]

I’ve just read through the foreword and there is some really thought provoking big ideas there. I was taken with them flagging the barriers for many ethics minorities to succeed are also barriers for the white majority, so fix the problem as a whole.

This looks like a really worthwhile document. Notwithstanding your second post @BobKowalski as you’ve gone into the detail.

 

[BobKowalski]

Also ’British Empire was super awesome and did a lot of good things, so can we stop talking and teaching kids about the bad things?’

Lol.

 

[BobKowalski]

I’ve just read through the foreword and there is some really thought provoking big ideas there. I was taken with them flagging the barriers for many ethics minorities to succeed are also barriers for the white majority, so fix the problem as a whole.

This looks like a really worthwhile document. Notwithstanding your second post @BobKowalski as you’ve gone into the detail.

The conflation between the two is terrible. Both can be true, both can exist, so do two separate reports because the barriers are not necessarily the same barriers. There is a whole different set of arguments on class bias, regional bias and racial bias.

The commentary of the report comes across as ‘yes the stats show racial bias in wealth, education, housing etc, but look some white people are disadvantaged too.’

Well, yes. So do something about it.

 

[Vic]

So CRED lacks street cred?

 

[Vic]

And as the government has done sod all with previous reports on the subject, I don't think we can expect much to happen from this. They'll probably go with trying to abandon BAME as an acronym, which Priti Patel had already said she didn't like, but, having taken years to get BAME widely used it will now take years to come up with another bit of shorthand. We'll end up either with just "ethnic minorities" or just get more and more subdivisions in descriptions (how would you describe my great nephew - Scottish / Singaporean, but only ever lived in UK?), and still find an acceptable way to avoid asking "Where are you from?" when you're asking about ethnicity.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

Also ’British Empire was super awesome and did a lot of good things, so can we stop talking and teaching kids about the bad things?’

Lol.

well it did do a lot of good, despite your protestations.

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

well it did do a lot of good, despite your protestations.

For us maybe ...... not so much for the other countries.

 

[BobKowalski]

There are some good points in the report, yet the overriding impression is that it doesn’t want to offend anyone, specifically the powers that be. It ’softens’ everything or makes odd claims ie ‘we do not think the system is deliberately rigged against minorities‘ well, deliberately, no it isn’t, then talks about scio-economic backgrounds also being a factor (well, duh), yet then concludes ‘we take the reality of racism seriously and do not deny it is a real force in the UK’ having spent the previous paragraphs treating racism as a minor inconvenience.

Its tone is very apologetic. Perhaps that will serve it better in the long run than confrontational (I’m being generous, but you never know), yet the event that sparked the report was confrontational, namely BLM, which is interesting.

Requires a second read through later.