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Racism
in England |
British Foreign Office minister Peter Hain last year warned that the UK is in danger of creating a black underclass similar to that in South Africa. The foreign office minister, a long standing opponent of apartheid, said the situation in the UK compared to that in the new South Africa.
"There is an opening divide between a black professional class, which is doing extremely well compared with previous generations, [and] a vast pool of ethnic minority citizens who are doing extremely badly in comparison not just with mainstream society but with their better-off brothers and sisters," he said.
His comments followed a report for the Department for Education and Employment (DFEE) which found that Afro-Caribbean, African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups consistently fared worst in education, higher education and the labour market. According to the study black men are three times more likely to be unemployed.
The report's author - research fellow David Owen said the study showed that economic improvement was no longer merely an issue of "white advantage and minority disadvantage".
"In Birmingham, for example, the most disadvantaged educationally are Afro-Caribbean boys and the most advantaged are Indians, both boys and girls."
Another report concluded that many black men in the UK are denied the opportunity to play a full role in the lives of their children through no fault of their own - Richard Berthoud found that although the qualifications achieved by young Caribbean males were on average not much worse than those of white males, they were twice as likely to be unemployed. "You play by the rules, you get an education, and you end up filling shelves in a supermarket."
But some ethnic minority groups are flourishing in Britain, according to another report published by the University of Warwick's Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations.
Indian and Chinese groups are generally flourishing at school and in the workplace while people of Pakistani, Afro-Caribbean and Bangladeshi origin are facing more of a struggle both during education and then in employment.
Glass Ceiling
Professor Tariq Modood, the research director on ethnicity at the University of Bristol, says black and Asian Britons face problems at both ends of the socio-economic scale. "There is a real glass ceiling - one of the ways this works is that ethnic minorities need to be better qualified than their white peers."
As co-author of a landmark report on ethnic minorities for the Policy Studies Institute in 1997, he found that South Asians people from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan - were more polarised than those of Afro-Caribbean extraction.
"Afro-Caribbeans were less likely to be among the higher earners, but they were also less likely to be amongst the lowest paid, even compared to whites."
Although there is evidence to suggest that the situation is being redressed, Professor Modood said young black men continue to lag behind. The key, he added, is to get more people from ethnic minorities into higher education.
"Pakistani men and women, Bangladeshi men and women, and Afro-Caribbean women are now better represented at universities - but not at the better institutions."
"There's still an attitude that if we target by social disadvantage, then we don't need to worry about targeting by ethnicity. Yet the different groups may have their own issues that need to be addressed."
Open to success
Although few black Britons experience the level of deprivation faced by some African-American communities, Professor Modood said migrants often fare better in the United States than the UK.
"Suppose you have a person from Pakistan going to the US and another going to Britain, and they have identical qualifications. The American Pakistani is likely to end up doing better - there's more scope for upward mobility for migrants.
"Perhaps they are more accepted in the US. Many Americans are migrants themselves, or their parents or grandparents were migrants, so they are more open to their success."
'Racism that kills'
Ambalavaner Sivanandan, the director of the Institute of Race Relations, believes that the UK is heading towards a two-tier society of haves and have-nots.
Unless more efforts are made to fight institutional racism and poverty, the socio-economic divide will widen, he says.
"There's two types of racism in this country - the racism that discriminates and the racism that kills, which is compounded by poverty."
He says the government is on the right track with its policies to regenerate inner cities and restore power to local bodies, so that decisions taken can address the needs of the community. But successful black and Asian Britons must not turn their backs on those less fortunate than themselves, he says. "The black middle-classes are not helping their brothers and sisters - they have forgotten the kids in the inner cities.
Another issue is that of intra-racial tension which is often a threat to the harmonious interaction between minorities. There is a marked difference between Africans who are obsessed with education and self-improvement and their Afro-Caribbean brothers who are considered less ambitious by the Africans.
The recent stabbing by teenage gang members of a 10-year-old Nigerian boy, who was then left by passers-by to die in an open stairwell of a rundown London housing project, has led police to look into antagonisms between the Nigerian and Caribbean communities.
"Nigerian people are not popular in this area because they try to fit in and do well," Lola Ayonrinde, a local political leader, was quoted as saying in The Sunday Telegraph. "The West Indian community likes to pretend there is racism everywhere and black people are being held back. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to that point of view suddenly becomes a target."
As the debate on racism continues the British government is reviewing its policy on heritage, and in the light of the recent Runnymede Trust's report on multi-ethnic Britain, which finds 'Britishness' has overtones of racism, the review is likely to be significant.
But what is heritage and who is it for? Is it stately homes? Or is it more about events within living memory? Stonehenge versus the Notting Hill Carnival.
Attitudes towards heritage are changing. It wasn't long ago that people thought there was little point in saving anything after 1950. But while attitudes may be changing, they have yet to include everybody.
For Claire Holder for instance who runs the Notting Hill Carnival in London, traditional English heritage embodied by historic houses has a very different resonance. "I regard them as part of my heritage but in a negative way. I'm angry that the whole issue of slavery took place and the benefits are all there, stored up in all the stately homes and Houses of Parliament. It's not heritage you want to celebrate", she said.
What she is proud of and feels ought to be protected is the Carnival itself. For anyone from the Caribbean it represents, in its 36 years of life, a very important development. "My ancestors developed this style of carnival because it was particularly significant that they had the freedom to walk the streets", Ms Holder said.
Everyone involved in the debate says the definition of heritage must change.
Other Evidence of Racism
A confidential prison service report following the murder of an Asian inmate by a white prisoner at Feltham, west London, has concluded that the youth jail is guilty of institutional racism, with ethnic minority staff and inmates enduring overt racist abuse by warders and failures by senior management.
The report found a "failure by staff at all levels to take complaints of racist incidents seriously".
Half of Feltham's 717 inmates are from Asian or Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, as are 11% of its 654 staff. The senior management is entirely white.
And British government figures indicate that Black men are up to five times as likely to be unemployed than white men, which suggest that ethnic minorities face widespread discrimination looking for jobs.
While fewer than 6% of white men are unemployed, the figure for some groups of black men is as high as 27%, according to the office for national statistics.
Among women, the worst affected are those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, nearly five times as likely than white women to be unemployed.
Labour market experts say these discrepancies show that equal opportunities legislation has failed to combat racism by employers.
Finally allegations of discrimmination are now arising in relation to disbursement of money by the Millennium Commission.
Alex Pascall, a former organiser of the Notting Hill carnival, was offered just under £9m by the Millennium Commission to set up a African-Caribbean heritage centre in London.
But Mr Pascall says the offer was withdrawn after disagreements on a number of issues. He is unhappy with the way the commission deals with ethnic minority applicants. "It has not given the black community anything for what we have contributed here.
He said that compared to the money spent on the Millennium Dome ethnic minority groups had received a pittance.
"Out of £2bn we have not even got 1%, that's nonsense," he said.