BARAC UK is deeply concerned by the tone and content of the report of the government commission on race and ethnic disparities, published on March 31.
It seeks to reduce the very real and devastating lived experience of racism by racialised groups of people living in Britain.
It also seeks to divide black and ethnic minority communities into “good” and “bad” migrants and suggests that those of us who campaign against racism are stuck in the past or that we are imagining it — effectively gaslighting people who experience racism.
To suggest that racism is in the past ignores the impacts of over a decade of austerity with disproportionate impacts on employment and service provision, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Windrush scandal, the treatment of people who are displaced and are refugees, the disproportionate rate of contracting and dying of coronavirus, to name but a few recent and current events, still having an impact now.