Tony Sewell is the lead author behind the recently published Sewell Report, formally entitled the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. The report seems to reflect a real attempt to gather and analyse facts, draw conclusions and make recommendations for improvement which are based on evidence, not emotion or prejudice or politics or pursuit of a popular cause. It has generated reactions which illustrate the breadth of views surrounding racism, its prevalence, causes and effects. Therefore, it is to be hoped that the report will ultimately generate constructive debate leading to hard actions which reduce and mitigate the consequences of truly racist behaviour wherever it exists in the UK.
However, some of those reactions illustrate a depressing aspect which seriously risks derailing proper discussion. The report declares “Overt and outright racism persists in the UK”, and so there is a lot of work to be done to eradicate racial prejudice. But it also forms the view that great progress has been made to reduce racism in the UK. This conclusion is shared by Sara Khan, a Muslim recently appointed to advise the UKGov on social cohesion and resilience, who is quoted in the Times of 3 April “We have made huge progress compared to the time when my father came to this country in the 1960’s” while recognising that there are fundamental challenges still to be grappled with. Anybody who was alive in the 1960s would certainly echo this truth.
But the report did not conclude that there is “systemic” racism or “institutional” racism or structural racism in the UK. Those who see the world through a racist prism immediately condemned the report as essentially not finding enough racism to satisfy them, and so concluded that the report is useless and invalid, rejecting it out of hand. No examination of facts accompanied the condemnation. Clive Lewis, a Labour MP, is reported to have tweeted a Klu Klux Klan likeness to the report, and thus ignorant insult replaced debate. Tony Sewell apparently received a barrage of personal attacks through social media, and the standard “coconut” accusation levelled at people of colour who do not share an extreme view seems to have been one of the milder insults. A professor, Dr Priyamvada Gopal, likened him to Goebbels of holocaust fame. Disagreement with aspects of the report is to be expected and should be part of the debate, but personal assassination without regard to facts again is seeking to hijack thought.
Those who dismiss out of hand anyone who fails to evangelise a white supremacy rhetoric have resorted again to loudmouthed hatred, slogans and noise, ignoring complex evidence, to drown out rational levelheaded analysis and consideration, seeking to nullify the silent majority who do not share “their truth”, using fear to hide and denigrate the actual truth.
Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times of 4 April, in an article headed “Pit my truth against your truth and it’s a terrifying race to the bottom “, wrote almost despairingly about “the way facts are subordinated to feelings” and that the victim of our age is Truth itself. He said, “without objective truth we are sunk”, referring to how in place of debate the culture is becoming more vapid and more vicious. This reflects perhaps the frustration of so many people for whom conflict is not a goal but is to be avoided and so they lean towards compromise, when in fact they need to resist.
A recent feature of the racism narrative has become the nonsense idea that only people of colour, the ethnic minorities in the UK, can participate in the discussion about racism. Trevor Phillips in the Times of 5 April commented that this was in a way reinforced by the fact that 10 of the 11 commissioners who authored the report were from ethnic minorities. He referred with regret to the lack of comment on and reaction to the report from white people, who prefer to stand back: non ethnic minority people are some 83 % of the UK population, and their views and participation are needed if change is to be positive. The headline to his commentary reads “Silence of white establishment betrays Sewell”. This malaise of fear is exemplified too in the context of sexism and the running debate about misogyny: where increasingly it becomes unacceptable for men to express a view about the abuse of females. There is perhaps a culture crisis of freedom of speech where loud extremists are the voices drowning the softer voices of freedom loving people who just get on with their lives but do not want to be in constant argument: racism and sexism will be beaten perhaps by simple decent behaviour, imperfect but with great intentions.
The Sewell report itself records “Single issue identity groups raise volume and dominate discourse and reason” and “Making anonymous abuse harder online is a complex issue but should be a public policy priority”. The personal abuse of Tony Sewell himself bears testament to the truths of the Commission’s report.
