What Happens When Your Country Declares Itself the ‘Least Racist’ in the World?
To have the trauma you’ve experienced throughout your life marginalised by your government left me questioning myself and if those experiences were as real as they feel in my head
In 1954 American journalist Darrell Huff published a short book called How to Lie With Statistics. The premise is pretty self explanatory, and starts off with an example of a man who believes that crime is up in his neighbourhood. Crime is not up; crime is in fact down, but yet the statistics in his newspaper (that pull data from a wider sample size) say otherwise. I’ve used this trick a lot in meetings over the years. If I pull the right data from quarter 1 and quarter 2 I can say we’re showing great H1 growth verses the previous year. All the while knowing that if I start the sample a week or two earlier or throw in any H2 numbers….I’m screwed. The point is if you have a predetermined bias in what you want to say and the point you want to prove: there really is no data that need stand in your way.
Last year in response to the global Black Lives Matter protests the UK government commissioned a report on race and ethnic disparities in the United Kingdom. On the 31st of March 2021 this 258 page report was published and by page 10 I was already getting the sort of vibes I mention above. “The UK should be regarded as a model for other White-majority countries,” it writes within its introduction. Before then going on to reject the notion of White privilege and proclaiming that institutionalised racism could not be proven.
White liberals were furious. White conservatives were vindicated. People of colour for the most part pretty much got on with our day. Why? In the words of Dave Chappelle: we’ve been here before. The narrative that if successful people of colour exist within a society, then systemic disparity must be attributed to circumstances other than race; is not new. And it’s one that is often used by successful Black and White folk alike. For people of colour living in a White-majority country this stance serves as confirmation of our social mobility achievements — and as a subtle dissociation from the problematic elements of our communities. For White people its simply a way of saying I’m through apologising for being White.
For both groups the root of the message is the same: you can’t blame everything bad that’s happened to you on the fact that you’re Black. In principle there’s nothing wrong with this statement. I agree with this statement as much as I agree that not everything good that happened to you is because you’re White. But that statement is not what this article is about, its not what the commissioned report is really about. It’s about that H2 data I left out of my meetings at work. It’s about arming yourself with a conclusion and then going about making sure that fits with just the right blend of statistics.
Case in point: within the report there is a reference to a well established concept known as the “immigrant paradigm.” This attributes the success that Black African students achieve in school vs their Black Caribbean counterparts as having a direct correlation to the length of time their families have been in the UK. The report concludes that while unconscious bias may take place in the classroom, most Black Caribbean students are 3rd generation immigrants and as a result are less optimistic about the prospect of education as a way to change their lives.
And within this one section lies the broader agenda behind the report, and that is to decentralise the power of racial prejudice in the life experiences of Black Britons and other minority groups. That the onus is on us to wipe the dirt off of our shoulder and capture that immigrant optimism. What the report does not address is what actually happened to that optimistic spirit. What happens to a belief in a migrant land when signs read no dogs and no Blacks. When the Metropolitan Police are found to be institutionally racist. When bananas are thrown on football pitches. When friends, family and colleagues that arrived on HMT Windrush are at risk of deportation 70 years later. When tabloid newspapers declare you materialistic and brash for the exact same thing that they deem honourable for your White peers…
What happens to that optimism is that it dies. And this is the problem with trying to decentralise race from the discussion. Whether we like it or not it tends to come right back around unless we face it head on. The UK government doesn’t want to dip its toe into the waters of long term PTSD from generations of race related trauma. It’s way too messy, and honestly once it goes down that rabbit hole it has no idea where it may end up. So it just wants some clean quantitative data and some quick solutions, preferably ones that acknowledge racism but don’t let it drive the narrative. And also that we really are done with apologising for being White. You got that part right? Good.
It’s important to stress that most of the researchers involved in this report are Black. Since it’s publication they’ve received significant levels of criticism and even abuse which saddens me as much as the report itself. They were hoodwinked…bamboozled, and they deserve the support of the Black community more than any other. I have no doubt they set out trying to do something good, but quite simply the cards were stacked. I wrote a piece recently about how the British are the best in the world at repressing our most unfortunate feelings, so trying to prove the existence of institutionalised racism must have been like trying to prove the existence of the Mafia. Nobody was ever going to admit to this thing of ours. So any objective researcher not given the mandate or the resources for a sprawling qualitative project that incorporated extensive ethnographic field work and psychological profiling…could only really draw these conclusions. They can only comment on the statistics they see. Based on the brief they’ve been given.
I won’t lie it doesn’t feel good. Yes we have been here before, but there was something in this process that triggered me more than I could have anticipated. I know I’m not alone in this. To have the trauma you’ve experienced throughout your life marginalised by your government left me for a moment questioning myself and if those experiences were as real as they feel in my head. If maybe I do blow this whole race thing out of proportion and I should be happier with the society that I live in — top shelf gaslighting. They almost got me. Progress has been made, I will not argue against that and I will not undermine the efforts that have been made by those that have come before me. But we’re a lot further from being done than we can afford to let anybody get away with thinking.
Also this report is not completely without merits. The attempts it makes to highlight workable solutions such as removing names from job applications to minimalize unconscious bias are commendable. And I do believe in a degree of accountability from all of us in taking up the opportunities that are afforded us — regardless of race. But I cannot help but draw the conclusion that this report, at its root, is written very much in the spirit of the UK wanting to justify its status as a moral authority on social injustices. And as long as the analysis is spliced correctly and the intangibles removed — it has the data readily at hand to do that.
I don’t know what happens next. The title of this article is an open question rather than a response. The one thing I do know is that our experiences, the ones that cannot be worked into an quantitative snapshot; are real and they matter. We cannot allow those that wish to dismiss them or place them at the periphery of discussion to become emboldened by this premeditated assault. But we do also need to reflect on what data is in this report; flawed as it may be. White privilege does exist, institutionalised racism does exist — but so does opportunity. Wanting to emphasise the extra hurdles we face and not attempting to run the race at all, should not be confused as the same thing. We must strive for the former, while always making sure we reject the latter.
References:
Huff, D., 1954. How to Lie with Statistics. W.W Norton & Company
Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: Report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-report-of-the-commission-on-race-and-ethnic-disparities
