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ISSUES: Racial & Ethnic Discrimination
Chapter 2: Tackling racism
into the numbers, this commitment
simply appears to reflect the
changing makeup of the working age
population over the next five years.
Briefly, the older people retiring
over the next five years are much
less diverse than the younger people
joining the labour market over that
same period. For example, in the
2011 Census, there were 704,000
BME people aged 20–24, or 20% of
the total. Conversely, only 6% of the
3.2 million people aged 60–64 were
BME. The commitment to 660,000
more BME people in employment
is therefore simply a statement of
demographic change in Britain, and
appears to require no action from the
Government to achieve.
Three points follow from this
analysis. First is that the Government
has a tendency to quote overall
numbers when discussing the labour
market, for example the overall
number of people in work, or the
overall number of BME people
getting apprenticeships. They much
less frequently cite the various
employment rates, or the proportion
of people employed, either for the
overall population, or for particular
demographic
groups,
whether
women or BME people. Because the
overall population is growing, as
is the BME population (from 5% in
1991 to 14% in 2011 to 30% by 2051),
overall figures will always appear
positive. Yet if we look instead at
employment rates, or the proportion
in work or getting apprenticeships,
the figures are far less flattering, and
suggest no real improvement in the
labour market.
Second is that even if we are
generous in interpreting the Prime
Minister’s commitment as a ‘target’,
it is a very low bar, and one that
should easily be cleared, at least
in the case of apprenticeships. The
third and final point is that the Prime
Minister’s commitment will result
in no improvement – and perhaps
a worsening – of ethnic inequalities
in Britain. Runnymede and others
have questioned before whether
policies that benefit all will in fact
benefit everyone fairly or equally,
but the apprenticeship commitment
is in practical terms a commitment
to implementing a policy that
knowingly
and
predictably
results in less BME people being
successful. This not only falls short
of an expectation that policies might
actually reduce existing inequalities,
but it also suggests that government
will be unmotivated even to ensure
so-called “universal” policies fairly
benefit everyone.
In 2012 the Prime Minister rejected
the need for equality legislation as so
much red tape on the grounds that no
government minister or civil servant
would ever directly or indirectly
design policies that harmed ethnic
minorities and other groups. Or, as
he put it, “We have smart people in
Whitehall who consider equalities
issues while they’re making the
policy.” Previously we might have
viewed this claim as benign ignorance
of the unconscious and unintended
ways in which seemingly fair and
universal policies can have unfair
and unequal outcomes. With these
new ‘promises’, there are only two
conclusions: either the Prime Minister
and his aides are unaware of the facts
about ethnic minorities in Britain
today, or they are unconcerned about
the fact that their policies will result
in rising ethnic inequalities in the
labour market. While briefings about
the facts might better inform the
clever people in Whitehall and in the
Cabinet, proper implementation of
the equality duty and greater public
mobilisation against racial inequality
are the only ways to respond to the
latter.
Omar is also a partner of CoDE, the
Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity.
19 June 2015
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The above information is reprinted
with kind permission from the
University of Manchester. Please
visit blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk
for further information.
© University of Manchester 2017
