It’s a lengthy report and I’ve seen several people take selected extracts out of context and add a huge dollop of moral outrage (particularly the deliberate skewering of the oblique reference to slavery). Torrencing. Several (leftie) commentators have even accused Dr Sewell as being the “token black man”, which seems an absurd (and ironically racist) allegation given his fellow members of the commission.
That’s understood, but looking at the panel what strikes me is not the lack of people of colour, it’s possibly the lack of people who can relate to and articulate the experience of institutional racism.
There is a lot of people on the panel who have been very successful in their chosen career and, I’m struggling to find a sensitive way of saying this, if you are one of the few that’s made it up the ladder, your experience of structural racism and the barriers it creates might be very different to the millions who haven’t got a chance.
It’s like the government have gone out to find 10 of the most successful people of colour they can find to put together this report, when what they need to do was to find a way to express the experience of those who aren’t.
It’s the old thing about powerful successful people - they never believe they are successful because they might had had some luck along the way. That’s going to be as true for BAME people as it is for anyone else.
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Tony Sewell was well known for denying the existence of institutional racism, blaming bad parenting in black communities for inequality. It’s probably why he got the job.
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100%. That’s precisely what struck me about the panel too and you’re right that their success might well lead to a problem of perception bias when looking at the issue as a whole. The problem is though how do we appoint a broader section of people to form such a commission if we’re deliberately trying to balance it out with those from an ethnic minority background who have been less successful in their fields because of their ethnic minority background?
I dont doubt that certain people will have jumped on it but that cant cover everyone or every word in the report.
Thanks for pointing out what I found incredibly difficult to write.
Assuming the report has been pretty much unchanged by Boris (he probably hasn’t read it) and those in his inner circle it then strikes me that the commissioners of the report haven’t really gone out and spoken to people in the community at all. Its the classic, “I haven’t seen it so it doesn’t exist” trope.
And what’s more. Where’s the token Welsh person on that board of Commissioners?
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I dont think you 100% have to do that but you at least need to go out into the community and speak to people.
To me that clearly hasn’t happened (unless the report has been whitewashed)
Why do you say that this clearly hasn’t happened? If you see Appendix B of the report (Call for evidence) the commission sought evidence from a vast array of sources and had responses from 325 different organisations, all listed.
What I am surprised by (disappointed by?) is the time that this call for evidence ran for. Quite clearly a lot of effort has gone into compiling this report but, for me, the period where evidence was called for and submissions ought to have been a lot longer to allow for as much data as possible (it ran from 26 October 2020 to 30 November 2020). I would expect calls for evidence in similar enquiries to last for at least three months.
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Poorly worded on my part but given the report has clearly angered or at the very least disappointed a lot of people there is clearly something wrong. My guess is that they have been speaking to the wrong people.
I need to go through it but did these groups come forward themselves or were they invited? Did the Commissioners actively seek out a wide and representative spread of UK society?
Given the response to it I think its perfectly valid to question how the report was compiled.
I dont know how the ECHR operate but government inquiries often select a topic and then publically ask for evidence. There may be some approaches made behind the scenes to representative organisations they have existing links with or believe have an interest - but that wouldn’t prevent others from submitting evidence as far as I am aware.
As @Kopstar says, the small window during a pandemic for a very complex issue won’t have helped.
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And perhaps that’s the problem. I agree the timescale is short but asking for evidence in this instance feels ridiculous.
It immediately provides a very narrow view on reality. Your average person that may have something to contribute on this is probably blissfully unaware of the investigation and is quite possibly not willing to come forward.
Imagine the response if they had created a platform similar to the one on sexual harassment in schools? I bet the result would be a very different one.
Hmm…the plot thickens…
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He was interviewed on World At One on Radio 4 today. Well worth a listen.
Edit: if you go to BBC Sounds, the section on this story starts at the 26:43 mark of today’s World At One.
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If true, then that means the report is about as useful as tits on a bull
A large number of people already think that about the report, but this would confirm it.
And going by the article, others are saying similar things.
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here is the text from the Foreward in the report that S.I. Martin mentions in the report above
The ‘Making of Modern Britain’ teaching resource is our response to negative calls for
‘decolonising’ the curriculum. Neither the banning of White authors or token expressions of
Black achievement will help to broaden young minds. We have argued against bringing down
statues, instead, we want all children to reclaim their British heritage. We want to create a
teaching resource that looks at the influence of the UK, particularly during the Empire period.
We want to see how Britishness influenced the Commonwealth and local communities, and
how the Commonwealth and local communities influenced what we now know as modern
Britain. One great example would be a dictionary or lexicon of well known British words which
are Indian in origin. There is 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-modelled African/Britain.
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Interesting take. Runnymede are a really good race equality think tank.
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That’s just offensive. It’s absolutely gross.
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Not great is it?
And I have to ask how did Tony Sewell come up with that idea? I’m presuming he wrote the passage.
I also think the previous words are important in suggesting that British Colonialism should be celebrated. Perhaps they should actually just keep it factual and let people make up their own mind whether they should celebrate it or not?
I don’t think this is necessarily a problematic take. They are not saying that the slave period wasn’t about profit and suffering; they are saying that there are other elements to it, that it also effectively acted as the genesis to modern-day multiculturalism.
I don’t think it’s a new story though - anyone who’s read High Wind in Jamaica can attest to that. In essence it is commending the adaptability and indefatigability of humanity, even in the face of (and out of the roots of) gross injustice and oppression.
That is a passage, however, that has effectively been taken and distorted to somehow suggest that the authors of the report are somehow whitewashing history and trying to place a positive spin on slavery when that’s not what they’re doing, imo. It’s simply acknowledging, quite factually and correctly, that “culturally African people” adapted to their environment and acted as catalysts for societal change.
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Why did they have to adapt? Why weren’t they accepted?
Surely that is the issue here, not that these people were forced to adapting to simply try and fit in.
https://twitter.com/blackpoppies14/status/1377522299570638848
https://twitter.com/simartin/status/1377551258287017986
I wonder how many others?
Interesting that @Mascot mentions the Runnymede Trust. They are the joint claimants (together with the Good Law Project) in the JR against the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that was given permission to proceed last week by Mr Justice Swift.
This judicial review is challenging the appointments of Dido Harding (as Chair of Test and Trace, and subsequently as Head of the National Institute for Health Protection), Kate Bingham (as Head of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce) and Mike Coupe (as Director of Testing at NHS Test and Trace).
They are being challenged essentially on two grounds. Firstly, that the government has adopted a policy of appointing people to positions without an open competitive process and this policy or practice is discriminatory. Secondly, challenging the decisions themselves on the grounds that it was unreasonable to appoint the individuals they chose.
I should say that although Mr Justice Swift gave permission he made the following observation:
“I suspect that on further examination the Claimants may face difficulty on a number of the issues in this case; for example, whether they have standing; whether the 4 instances of appointments relied on demonstrate the existence of the PCPs they assert [this is ground 1]; and whether any claim directed specifically to the first two appointments challenged [Harding as Chair of Test and Trace, and Bingham as Head of UK’s Vaccine Task Force] is part of anything capable of being described as conduct extending over a period. Nevertheless, the claim is arguable in the sense that it merits consideration at a full hearing.”
No date has, as yet, been set for that final hearing.
I should say that there is potentially some confusion about which appointments this claim is challenging. The Claim form suggests they are those as I have set out [redacted] Court Bundle.pdf - Google Drive
But the pre-action protocol the GLP has on the website relating to this 2020.10.28 - [redacted] Letter Before Claim.pdf - Google Drive doesn’t include references to Bingham and instead names Harding and Coupe, as well as Gareth Williams, Ben Stimson, and Paul da Laat (all of whom it says were appointed to senior positions in test and trace). I think the actual appointments being challenged are those as set out in the claim form (Harding x2, Bingham and Coupe) but this doesn’t quite tally with the pre-action protocol letter GLP has up.
They could have difficulties on costs if the claim is pursuing challenges that were not mentioned in the pre-action protocol.
Anyway…we’ll have to see what comes of that.
We’re still awaiting, incidentally, the judgment from the hearing on 15 February 2021, which was the action brought against the Cabinet Office challenging the awarding of a contract to Public First. I had expected that to have been handed down already but it remains in the ether.
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