British government review: No evidence of institutional racism

March 31, 2021. The British government recently issued a report.

The conclusions are remarkable, given the cultural memes rampant today. Now the deniers of this evidence are those who have been accusing others of denying. According to an analysis published 31 March 2021:

The response to No10’s review into racial disparities in the UK has been truly disturbing. Labour, the radical left, the broadsheet press and the BBC — some of whose talking heads have spent the entire day looking and sounding bewildered — have reacted with horror to the suggestion that the UK is not actually a racist country. ‘What do you mean Brits aren’t a disgusting, hateful throng?’, the great and good have essentially cried. This could prove to be one of the most revealing moments in the contemporary culture wars.

Yet the evidence is pretty clear.

The review is a brave one. It doesn’t so much cut against the grain of received wisdom as drive a juggernaut straight through it. It says that of course there is still racism in the UK, especially on social media. But institutional racism? Structural blocks to ethnic-minority engagement in education, work and public life? Nope. That just isn’t there. This shibboleth of chattering-class thought — that Britain is a structurally foul country, holding back its ethnic minorities — has collapsed under scrutiny. The semi-religious conviction that has gripped the elites since at least the 1999 Macpherson report into the police’s handling of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence — the idea that Britain, from top to bottom, is stained with the original sin of racism — just isn’t reflected in the facts.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, headed by Tony Sewell, does something that feels almost revolutionary in the midst of today’s misanthropic conviction that Britain is a racist hellhole. It tells the truth. The truth that children from ethnic-minority backgrounds are doing just as well as, or are outperforming, white kids in compulsory education. Children with Black Carribean heritage are the only ones doing worse than white kids. The success of minority groups in the education system has ‘transformed British society over the last 50 years into one offering far greater opportunities for all’, the review says. It is testament to the extent to which the fact-lite fatalism of depressive identitarians has colonised public life that it feels shocking to read a positive assessment of life for ethnic minorities in the UK.