Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Campaigners slam UK government report into racial disparities as a 'whitewash'

Campaigners slam UK government report into racial disparities as a 'whitewash'

A highly anticipated report from a commission set up by the UK government to look into racial disparities in the country has been described as a "whitewash" by campaigners after it stated that there is no evidence that the UK is institutionally racist.

A short summary of the report, commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests last summer, was shared to the press ahead of its full release on Wednesday. This said that Britain is not yet a "post-racial" society, but said issues about race and racism are becoming "less important."

In fact, the UK "should be regarded as a model for other White-majority countries," the summary added, pointing to shrinking ethnicity pay gaps and success of some ethnic minority groups in education and "to a lesser extent, the economy."

The report itself, which is 264 pages long, has 24 recommendations, including bridging divides between the police and communities, establishing an office of health disparities, stopping the use of the term BAME (Black and minority ethnic) to help focus on disparities of specific ethnic groups, and advancing fairness in the workplace.

It calls for a new 'Making of Modern Britain' resource in response to calls for a more inclusive schooling curriculum, where children will be taught "a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modeled African/Britain."

The report attributed poor outcomes for some minority groups, including educational failure and crime, "to family breakdown as one of the main reasons for poor outcomes."

"Family is also the foundation stone of success for many ethnic minorities," the Commission's chairman, Tony Sewell, wrote in the report.

"Another revelation from our dive into the data was just how stuck some groups from the White majority are. As a result, we came to the view that recommendations should, wherever possible, be designed to remove obstacles for everyone, rather than specific groups," he added.

Campaigners said the report was politicized and failed to adequately address a number of barriers that minority groups face in the UK, from job discrimination, to being disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, or how minority ethnic frontline workers have died disproportionately during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"It's a whitewash," Halima Begum, the head of race equalities think tank the Runnymede Trust, told CNN.

Even the claim that the UK is a model for "White-majority countries" signals an unwillingness to acknowledge the public reckoning over institutional racism the public have been calling for, say campaigners.

"There's only three countries in Europe where you can track racism: Finland, Ireland and the UK," Begum said.

She explains many countries in Europe do not have disaggregated ethnicity data, which means "you actually cannot track racism and for [the commission] to say "we are a beacon" -- well the bar is very low."

"It is a monumental denial of structural racial inequality in the UK, and in fact, they're denying it even exists, which is frankly appalling," said Simon Woolley, the founding director of Operation Black Vote, and who chaired the government's race disparity unit between 2018 and 2020.

A 2019 Oxford University report found that Black Britons and those of South Asian origin -- particularly those with Pakistani background -- faced as much discrimination in the labor market as they did in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Black mothers have worse outcomes during pregnancy or childbirth than any other ethnic group in England. CNN polling last year also found that Black people are twice as likely as White people to say they personally have not been treated with respect by British police, with half (49%) of Black people and a quarter (26%) of White people indicating that experience.

The report summary said that some minorities have continued to be "haunted" by historic cases of racism, which has created "deep mistrust in the system which could prove a barrier to success."

"This Commission finds that the big challenge of our age is not overt racial prejudice, it is building on and advancing the progress won by the struggles of the past 50 years," the report notes, adding that it could not "accept the accusatory tone of much of the current rhetoric on race, and the pessimism about what has been and what more can be achieved."

It goes on to say that rising rates of hate crimes recorded by authorities is "because of improved police recording processes, and a greater awareness of what constitutes a hate crime."

It says the "increased age-adjusted risk of death from COVID-19 in Black and South Asian groups has widely been reported as being due to racism" as being an example of an "overly pessimistic narratives, heightened by" the pandemic. "However many analyses have shown that the increased risk of dying from COVID-19 is mainly due to an increased risk of exposure to infection," it writes.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the launch of the Commission on Race and Ethnic disparities last year following anti-racism protests across the country. But it was widely criticized for tasking Downing Street policy chief Munira Mirza to help set up it up. Mirza wrote in a 2017 Spectator article that an "anti-racism lobby" was peddling a "culture of grievance."

Sewell's appointment was also met with controversy. Anti-racism groups accused Sewell, who heads an education charity, of minimizing the effects of racism on educational attainment. "What we now see in schools is children undermined by poor parenting, peer-group pressure and an inability to be responsible for their own behaviour. They are not subjects of institutional racism," Sewell wrote in Prospect magazine in 2010.

Responding to the report, Begum said: "Johnson should look into the eyes of the families of the 64% of nurses and doctors that died in the NHS that were Black or from an ethnic minority and tell them that institutional racism doesn't exist."

"Tell the parents of the boy who is six times more likely to be excluded from school because he's Black that institutional racism doesn't exist, tell the Black woman who is four times more likely to die in childbirth than her white friends that institutional racism doesn't exist," she added.

In the last five years, there have been at least four reviews into structural racism in the UK -- which have included around 200 recommendations addressing deaths in custody, the criminal justice system, and the Windrush scandal.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×