Equanomics Index Jan 2010

THE EQUANOMICS

UK INDEX January 2010

THE EQUANOMICS UK INDEX

Structural inequality costs in monetary and human terms. In this issue we explore several aspects of systemic inequality. We question whether some of the current views

beyond Barack Obama.

In particular there has been a questioning of the appropriateness of the terminology of Institutional Racism despite this year of the 10th anniversary of the Lawrence Inquiry report which was remarkable not least for the fact that an establishment inquiry defined Institutional Racism and levelled it at the police.

There are many questions, which arise including:

THE EQUANOMICS UK INDEX January 2010 (FOREWORD)

1. If it is no longer appropriate is there another word /term to better describe what seems to be structural disadvantage on racial terms?

2. Or if it is appropriate why do people think that? What in fact do they mean by it?

3. Are consistent patterns or performance indicators of racial inequality in

the police, employment, political representation etc enough to warrant the label of institutional racism?

4. If we accept there is institutional racism what can we do to eradicate it? Are current efforts sufficient?

5. There are several definitions (see note 1) of the term and so maybe it is open to too many interpretations to be useful?

We know racial inequalities are tenacious in the police and the criminal justice system, in some areas of education, in employment, housing and health care in many instances change is extremely slow. Why is this? Is done that is better than or different to current approaches?

In order to address these questions in a considered and inclusive way, Equanomics UK organised a series of roundtable events across the UK to hear from key local people.

We wanted to ensure that increased numbers of people in local communities can add to the debate about, and actions to tackle, racism and institutional racism, which often affect them, but are too often framed without them.

This issue of the index is aimed at evidencing the very real structural and systemic inequalities that affect mainly people of African and Asian origin and also at challenging myths which may lead to the wrong conclusions.

Karen Chouhan and Katy Sian open with a questioning of the recent views that institutional racism is no longer an appropriate term

Professor Ben Bowling of Kings College London takes a look at the Criminal Justice System and challenges the punitive approach as knife crime continues to be an issue despite

Geoff Tansey a writer and consultant on food, agriculture and development writes about global food systems arguing that food shows well why our current economic model is flawed, with almost a billion underfed and over a billion over fed people.

Professor Clarence Lusane our correspondent in Washington argues that post raciality or Obama going beyond race is a myth. We need to go beyond racism before that happens. While structural and persistent disparities survive based on colour lines institutionally or systemically we cannot go beyond racism or race.

Professor Ludi Simpson and Nissa Finney offer a summary from their new



should cause us to regurgitate the diet of myths we have been fed over the last 8 years especially concerning integration and cohesions and instead embrace a more accurate, positive and less problematising view of minorities in Britain.

The full transcript of Doreen Lawrand two key reports accompany this issue:

1. SThe Stephen Lawrence Review an independent commentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry - by Dr. Richard Stone

2. T

The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 10 yrs on a critical review of the literature - by Nicola Rollock, the Runnymede Trust.

Note 1 Definitions of Institutional Racism

The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report: 'Racism in general terms consists of conduct or words or practices which advantage or disadvantage people because of their colour, culture or ethnic

appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.'

The Inquiry concluded: 'We do believe that institutional racism is apparent in those areas described. But we do not accept that it was universally the cause of the failure of this investigation, any more than we accept that a finding of institutional racism within the police service means that all officers are racist.'

Lord Scarman 1981:

'It was alleged by some of those who made representations to me that Britain is an institutionally racist society. If by that is meant that it is a society, which knowingly, as a matter of policy, discriminates against Black people, I reject the allegation. If, however, the suggestion being made is that practices may be adopted by public bodies as well as by private individuals which are unwittingly discriminatory against Black people, then this is an allegation

(The Brixton Disorders (10-12 April 1981) page 11

BLACK POLICE ASSOCIATION 'The term institutional racism should be understood to refer to the way the

institution or organisation may systematically treat, or repeatedly treat

occupational culture within the police service, given the fact that the majority of police officers are white, tends to be the white experience, the white beliefs, the white values'.

COMMISSION FOR RACIAL EQUALITY 'Institutional racism has been defined as those established laws, customs and practices which systematically reflect and produce racial inequalities in society'.

DR ROBIN OAKLEY 'The term institutional racism should be understood to refer to the way

institutions may systematically treat or tend to treat people differently in The addition of the word institutional therefore identifies the

source of the differential treatment; this lies in some sense within the organisation rather than simply with the individuals who represent it'. STOKELY CARMICHAEL AND CHARLESV HAMILTON (1967) '(Institutional racism) originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society. It relies on the active and pervasive operation of anti-Black attitudes and practices. A sense of superior group position prevails: whites are better than Blacks and therefore Blacks should be subordinated to whites. This is a racist attitude and it permeates society on both the individual and institutional level, covertly or overtly'.


Karen Chouhan and Katy Sian

(The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 10 years on reports from Dr. Richard Stone and the Runnymede Trust, as well as the transcript of the speech Doreen Lawrence gave at the 10 years on conference, accompany this issue of the Equanomics Index)

Recently we have been struck by the level of hostility towards the (racism) and its antithesis anti racism. We have even heard the argument that the institutionalisation of anti racism is the cause of the rise of the BNP. The anger it seems to me is coming from people whose comfort zones have been shaken because the Lawrence Inquiry definition led to the Race Relations Amendment Act and with it the legal requirements and tools, which might actually make a difference! This threat to the status quo seemed somehow more real than previous legislation had suggested - and so instead

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM NO LONGER APPROPRIATE FOR WHOM?

of swallowing the bitter pill, which requires realignment and re-adjustment, some are spitting it out preferring a conservation mentality.

In addition the Equality Bill 091 could potentially weaken the current race equality laws.

complacent but time to recognise reality and strengthen protection against race discrimination, not weaken it.

The hard won gains of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which required the fulfilment of specific duties to assess, monitor, and publish statistics on race equality performance, may now be replaced with the requirement for public bodies to set equality objectives.

The dilemma we face as race equality protagonists, is that the bill itself does actually make some improvements in general - particularly so for other equality areas and this is to be welcomed. However, where the existing race equality duties have been shown to be effective then there should be no regression, no dilution and no moving away from a clear statement of these duties. Where the current race equality duties

improvements then these should be welcomed.

Nine roundtable events have been held over the last six months on whether the concept of institutional racism and three specifically on the Equality Bill. All of these were designed to help inform communities and race equality organisations about the proposed changes and current questioning of institutional racism. The roundtable events were held in conjunction with a range of organisations including JUST West Yorkshire, AFIADO Web solutions, Migrant Workers North West, The Race Equality Centre Leicester and the 1990 Trust and included over 300 representatives from NGOs idisability organisations, and public authorities. The roundtables were held in Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, and London and had representatives from many more areas including Norfolk, Essex, Northampton, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds, and several London boroughs. The following considerations are as a result of these meetings.

The Equanomics response to the consultation on the proposals for new Specific Duties is also attached to this article.

For many years until the Lawrence Inquiry, race equality activists had argued that the Race Relations Act 1976 was inadequate in tackling racial inequalities in the UK. The murder of Stephen Lawrence propelled the debate and the Lawrence Inquiry called by Jack Straw MP resulted in the most thorough piece of race equality legislation across Europe -The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Its particular strength was the tools it offered to tackle institutional racism as defined by the Lawrence Inquiry, which said that this was at the heart of the failures of policing in the Stephen Lawrence case. Many other British institutions also admitted institutional racism to be a factor in their organisations. The then Commission for Racial Equality developed codes and guidance for the new Act. Millions of pounds have been spent by public authorities in meeting the requirements of the Act including for Race Equality Schemes.

Now we potentially have a new Act, which if it gets passed may not have any

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM


requirements for Race Equality Schemes

This is because 1. The new government will have the power to decide what specific duties are

attached to the Act

2. the authorities themselves - and a suggestion that they may not have to cover all protected groups.

This could mean that the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 becomes redundant and we could be left with little more than the General Duty with requirements designed to tackle institutional racism over the last 10 years potentially ignored. This will constitute a regression from the race equality legislation that currently exists and must be avoided. Previously we have written about the growing questioning and denials of institutional racism, which seem to be part of a trend to move away from a focus on race equality and particularly structural race inequality.

for public bodies that already work conscientiously on equalities, for those that

Who is going to measure their progress, and against what? If an authority under-changing the goalposts? Or chopping and changing

targets at will?

Imagine a scenario where a public body sets objectives so easily obtainable that at the end of the year it puts objectives and award our- and vigour required by the specific duties for a Race Equality Scheme under the Race Relations (Amendment)

the Jelly Baby approach.

wrong, but that the craftspeople need better training and monitoring.

How is it that complex concepts of performance management have been so easily incorporated into businesses and authorities in the last decade but these same bodies find it so difficult to take on board equality related process?

Performance management is their bread and butter be good at. The specific duties need to stay and, in fact, be strengthened. The Equanomics UK response to the specific duties consultation can be seen as an appendix to this article and this outlines all of the key issues and views which were raised at the Equality bill roundtable meetings.

Below we offer some thoughts on the recent phase in a culture of denial of racism and institutional racism.

Remember that until the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the term Institutional Racism (IR) was limited to the realm of academics and activists. But the Inquiry ensured that that

neglect was no longer possible. For many, the recognition of Institutional racism was a zenith, a hope for a Britain brave enough to own up to its past, and challenge entrenched patterns of prejudices, discriminatory practices and structural inequalities.

The real significance was a challenge that Britain could perhaps realise swift progress to racial equality, and the resulting Race Relations Amendment Act was a much lauded tool to institutionalise the antidote to institutional racism.

Some, though, wondered how long it would be before the backlash. Why would some be so suspicious?

Perhaps because of the experience of hundreds of years of building a nation empire on slavery, colonialism and the general exploitation of people of colour -particularly from Asia, Africa and later the Caribbean would make Britain more resistant to change especially from one pubic inquiry and one murder investigation.

It seems the critics, unfortunately for race equality, may have been right.

The backlash is clearly now underway.

In February the National Policing Improvement Agency in partnership with the police and Home Office organised a conference to mark 10 years since the Lawrence inquiry. Sir Paul Stephenson, Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw followed the line that Institutional Racism was no longer an appropriate term. But who said? Did anybody ask us? Did anybody ask you?

The Rt. Hon. Jack Straw from the Ministry of Justice who set up the Macpherson inquiry when he was the Home Secretary in 1997 service has purged itself of the systemic racism Macpherson identified".

Sir Paul Stephenson, in his first major speech since he took over as the new Commissioner of the Met, concurred and said that,

"I have to say that, in all honesty, I no longer believe that label to be either appropriate or useful... I do not want the Met to be distracted by the debate about institutional racism. That label no longer drives or motivates change as it once so clearly and dramatically did. What matters to the people of London is that we continue to change. It is actions, not definitions, that solve problems."

Striking a different, indignant note, Doreen Lawrence, speaking at the same conference, said,

term drop in stop and searches in the black community. Today, black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people- this is not progress...

As of late I see the Government agenda moving from the issue of Race to mainstream equalities and the more socially acceptable notion of diversity. The question we should be asking is, have we fully addressed the issues surrounding Race? Do the police force and other public bodies think they have achieved their goals of addressing institutional racism- could they be accused



of the same today?

Only on Friday it was announced that central targets for ethnic minority recruitment into the police force are to be dropped- why? When the target for 2009 was 7 per cent representation and it has taken us 10 years to get to 4.1 per cent, why is it deemed

True, actions count. But analysis and language let alone objective reality - matter as around with words'. Several police officers at the Inquiry, for

example, prefixed their comments by saying signifier of power

and an expression of the politics who has the access to publish and media and arenas where whole concepts can be turned around? It can be used for or against people, as Michael Eric Dyson says:

now endure the irony of its alleged disappearance in silence if they speak of the continual effect of racial bigotry... If they appeal to black.... heritage as a source of security in the face of hostility or neglect, they are said to practice the distorting politics of identity... All of this makes clear that language is crucial to understanding... whether this is positive or negative, an uplifting or degrading experience depends largely on how language and the politics it reflects and the power it extend is used on our

The ruling powers who resisted change in the first place have now discarded efforts to eliminate IR, and

by creating a diversity, cohesion and integration platform for all race debates, and

a theory now festering in conservative and mainstream circles in ection?

But Institutional Racism that simple.

A HISTORY OF DENIAL There has been a long tradition of the denial of racism and especially institutional racism; a marked reluctance to face the nearly three century legacy of a slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism that has left marked structural inequalities in

The wave of new right thinking spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher during the 80s developed the idea that Britain and British people were not racist at all, just naturally xenophobic. In other words the sociology of or fused with biological arguments.

Beyond theoretical babble, Thatcher lead the drive to denounce and discredit anti-racism efforts, and many initiatives over the next ten years suffered as a result.


Notably, there were cuts in equal opportunity units in local authorities; cuts in the voluntary sector, especially of racial attack monitoring projects; and cuts in antiracist training programmes. Now, two decades later, all of this seems to be repeating itself.

in Britain. It is our 1937 in Husband 1986), covert and overt, conscious and subliminal, inherent or endemic, personal and collective, continues to permeate British society. Layers of ideology have built up through time in Britain in a way that it is unique.

Institutional racism is the premise, process and product of Britain's political and cultural history on issues of Recognising and acknowledging institutional racism is the prerequisite for challenging thinking and behaviour on 'race'.

The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry defined Institutional Racism like this:

'Racism in general terms consists of conduct or words or practices which advantage or disadvantage people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. In its more

an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.'

The prevalence of IR, then, can be measured by the existence or absence, of patterns of practices that disadvantage BME people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin and lead to measurable discrimination and disparity.

em, policing, and the practices at the Met? Have objective conditions changed so much that institutional racism is no longer an appropriate term?

The following data from the Runnymede Trust report (full report sent out with this issue) for the Lawrence Inquiry 10 years on, objectively measures the continued structural inequalities and disparities in the criminal justice system:

POLICE RECRUITMENT

Representation of ethnic minorities is still miserable: Ethnic minorities

Bullock, 2008), well below the national target (7%) set for the police service overall. Almost half of the 43 forces in England and Wales (47%; 20 forces) had not reached the employment target for Black and minority ethnic officers set by Home Secretary Jack Straw almost 10 years earlier

These targets are expected to be scrapped, as announced in the recent police Green Paper.



RETENTION

Officers from BME groups are more likely to have been dismissed or required to resign compared with their white counterparts (8.5% and 1.7% respectively) or to have left following voluntary resignation (46.6% of leavers from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds and 25.9% of all leavers from White backgrounds) (Jones & Singer 2008).

PROGRESSION

In March 2007, 2.9% of sergeants were from BME backgrounds compared to 95.8% of their white colleagues (Jones & Singer, 2008), even though high ranking Black and minority ethnic officers have worked in the service for lengths of time similar to those of their white colleagues (see Coaker, 2008).

STOP AND SEARCH

When the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report was published in 1999, Black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts. In 2008, they were seven times more likely to be stopped and searched.

In 2008 the stop and search of African Caribbeans under the counter terrorism legislation rose by 325% (Matthew Ryder in the Observer 03/05/09)

Only 13% of stops lead to an arrest

The black prison population is about five times greater than you would expect from numbers in the general population. (Bowling 2009)

Rather than continue to eliminate these disparities, it seems some instead try to y always

trumps rhetoric.

Professor Ben Bowling puts it this way:

While some progress has been made in the ten years since the Lawrence inquiry, the evidence on inequalities in income and poverty, educational achievement, health and wellbeing means that there is no room for complacency. There is no more graphic illustration of this than in the field of criminal justice and the issues at the heart of the Lawrence inquiry safety, liberty, justice and equality.

The real test of the effectiveness of government policy in tackling institutional racism and providing community safety for all is whether the young people of our towns and cities are free from the fear of being stabbed by a stranger or harassed by the police.

Clearly today institutional racism as a descriptor is still appropriate and necessary. And the global economic crisis, now gripping all sectors of people in the UK, will

most certainly exacerbate these levels of poverty. Until the indicators of change are much more substantial we fail to see how Sir Paul Stephenson can believe differently especially when the police service is founded on a culture of, and so much time and effort is dedicated to, performance indicators.

-policed and under-Tackling systemic exclusion whether this is in the economic sphere or in crime and justice should remain a priority for all those committed to social justice and

Structural inequalities, patterns of discrimination, and disparities in treatment by the criminal justice system, in employment and poverty levels, continue and are well documented. The significance of this concept is increasingly undermined with the current and somewhat convenient dismissal of racism as a problem. One of the key outcomes of election prompted even more so exactly this rejection, that is, his election has seen to consolidate

-with racism are no longer relevant today.

Conceptualising Institutional Racism According to S. Sayyid (2002)

and beliefs. The dominant method of thinking and dealing with racism has been through the perspective of a history of ideas. While this approach points out very clearly how racism has changed, it has been perhaps less successful in coping with banal or what has been called everyday racism, which does not seem to depend on the realm of explicit statements that can be deemed to be racist. Such thinking obscures the structural nature of racism and the way in which it is produced without any specific individual willing and

ualisation of racism enables us to see how overt racism through

name calling, graffiti, street violence etc, is not necessarily useful as it distorts and dismisses the actual configuration of racism, thus legitimates the actions of both individuals and institutions who would rarely call themselves racist. By adopting Sayyid's approach we are able to both move away from and disrupt the conventional ways of thinking about racism and institutional racism. Following the death of Stephen Lawrence, the Macpherson Report in 1999 found that the Metropolitan Police authority was institutionally racist due to its poor handling of the

produce racist effects without overt racists working in such systems and as Sayyid points

self-


The prevalence of Institutional racism, then, can be measured by the existence or absence - of patterns of practices that disadvantage BME people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin and lead to measurable discrimination and disparity. In contemporary Britain there is a growing sense for the need to eradicate racism however, such recognition becomes increasingly undermined with the popular discourse which persists on associating racism with only those who declare themselves as being racist. As such the (mis)conduct and (illegitimate) practices of the systems and institutions in Britain continue to be masked, disguised and concealed.

Both Sayyid and the Macpherson report are perhaps more useful for us as they both clearly demonstrate the need to conceptualise institutional racism beyond its simplistic terms which remain averse to acknowledging the function and constitution of racism, this is detrimental for several reasons as Sayyid points out:

has tended to mean that the reasons for the failure of integration are located within the ethnic minorities either in terms of linguistic competence, educational standards or other cultural features. This allows policies that seek to transform ethnic minorities as the only means of

The concept of enables us to explore the different means by which

systematically disadvantage minority ethnic communities in postcolonial Britain (Law, Turney and Phillips: 2002). The Macpherson report in its conceptualisation of the term is

of institutional racism resides in the taken-for-granted nature of routine

and Phillips: 2002).

sable the movement,

Is this challenge of institutional racism a reflection of the United States right-wing view that

Equanomics was set up to tackle structural injustice via economic lens and we cannot stand idly by. We need to reclaim race and the language of race until the racial disparities are gone.

For example:

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

The benefits of living in a more equal society are obvious, and as the Equalities Review: Fairness and Freedom Report (2007) points out,1 the gaps within educational achievements,

1 For further detail see, The Equalities Review (2007), Fairness and F reedom: The F inal Report of the Equalities Review. Crown Copyright.

rates of employment and other opportunities continue to impoverish all of us: Research shows that not only does absolute poverty in itself reduce our productivity; so does the

size of the gap between those at the top of society and those at the bottom. On several measures, that gap creates a drag on economic performance. This does not mean that the answer is to hold back those at the top or to sacrifice prosperity; but it does require focused effort on those who

It is suggested that employment is perhaps the fastest route out of poverty as it enables individuals to achieve both economic autonomy and prosperity. However, in the absence of work, which is an increasing problem facing the British population amid the current

there is a growing lack of motivation, skills and self confidence, alongside poorer health and well-being and as pointed out by the Fairness and Freedom or the community the loss of jobs brings decline, resurgent gender inequality, and in some circumstances, fuels racial and cultural tensions.2 Access to education then becomes significant if BME communities are to stand a chance within the employment sector. However, the data highlights once again the disadvantages young Black and Minority Ethnic communities experience within the education system. The CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do, shows that of all the BME communities young people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are increasingly less likely to participate within education, training or employment. Moreover, the report found that the level Black pupils who are permanently excluded from school is over twice the rate of their white counterparts.3 Success within the employment sector is largely determined by skills, qualifications,

at a severe disadvantage. In England it has been estimated that 600,000 individuals from Black and Minority Ethnic groups have no qualifications and only a 36% chance of getting a job, figures show that 39% of Britons of Bangladeshi origin and 39% of Britons of Pakistani origin have no qualifications and are very unlikely to go into adult education.4 This compares with only 18% Britons of Indian origin and 14% for white Britons.5 The report on Ethnic Minorities and the Labour market (2003) also revealed that:

minorities and Whites that are not attributable to different levels of education and skills. The persistence of workplace discrimination is an important reason for this. Limited access to job and

2003.

As previously highlighted poverty is common amongst ethnic groups who continue to also experience great disadvantage within the workplace, thus higher rates of unemployment and much lower pay:

2 See, The Equalities Review (2007), Fairness and F reedom: The F inal Report of the Equalities Review. Crown Copyright. 3 See CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an Integrated Britain. 4 See CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an Integrated Britain. 5 See CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an Integrated Britain.


d difference in earning levels of

ethnic minorities and their white counterparts. In fact almost all ethnic minority men earn less .

Data shows that the employment gap between Black and Minority Ethnic communities and the rest of the population is approximately 15% and this is only 1.3% lower than it was in 1987.6 It is estimated that the gap will take 25 - 30 years to eradicate if something more radical is not formulated within the near future. The Gini co-efficient measure also revealed that the gap between the rich and the poor has in fact widened which has subsequently resulted with even larger inequalities in income rates across society, combined it is clear that these marked disparities all impact upon the cost of equality.

HEALTH

It is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter life expectancies and suffer more from almost every social problem, as such the widening of the gap between rich and poor is clearly both problematic and detrimental to society.7 Poorer levels of

BME communities, they are more likely to suffer from lower levels of well being and as such lower life expectancies resulting from the disproportionate rates of poverty and deprivation. Government policy at the turn of the 1990s highlighted how crucial it was to provide greater access and more sufficient

8 However, despite the fact that racism and discrimination within the healthcare sector has been

into improved health outcomes and better service support has been slow (Atkin 2006: 244). Within the healthcare system it still remains evident that difference and diversity among ethnic groups is dismissed and ignored combined with the internalization about

BME groups encounter greater disadvantage within the health sector (Atkin 2006: 249).

Figures show that mothers born in Pakistan and the Caribbean experience significantly higher levels of infant mortality, for Pakistani mothers the data shows 8.6 deaths per 1000 live births and for Caribbean mothers the figure stands at 10.7, this compared with the average mortality rate of 4.9 per 1000 live births immediately points to a glaring disproportion. In addition to this peri-natal mortality rates also remain much higher within these groups.9 Data also shows that overall, ethnic minority groups in Britain tend to have higher rates of cardio-vascular disease than the rest of the population, with men born in South Asia being 50% more likely.10

Moreover statistics show that in relation to Mental illness, Black groups are heavily

6 National Employment Panel Business Commission (2007) 60/76 The Business Commission on Race Equality in the Workplace 7 Wilkinson, Richard and Pickett, Kate (2009) The Spirit Level: Why Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, Allen Lane. 8 A Postcolonial People, Hurst: London. 9 Information obtained from the CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an integrated Britain. 10 See the CRE Report (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an integrated Britain.

represented for example a report by REACH on raising the aspirations and attainment of Black boys and young Black men (2007) found that it has been estimated that African-Caribbean men and, in particular, Black men born in Britain are between 2.4 and 18 times more likely to be given a diagnosis of schizophrenia than the general population.11 The data seems to frighteningly suggest that such disparities show little sign of abating:

us of mental health patients undertaken in 2005

suggested that in-patients from the Black Caribbean, Black African, and Other Black groups were more likely (by 33 per cent to 44 per cent) to be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 compared with the average for all in-patients. Patients from these groups were also detained for a longer period of time on average than other in-patients. Research suggests that Black groups have more than six times the rate of psychotic illness than the general population and are presenting direct to acute care via the criminal justice system. The strong evidence of differential health outcomes should point to a response by healthcare professionals that recognises and provides for

ne, A Lot to do: Our Vision of an integrated Britain.

BME communities in Britain reporting poor health is strongly associated with higher levels of poverty and deprivation.12 As such much of the data frequently highlights that British people of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and Irish origin are likely to report the poorest health and within the contemporary British climate the marked disadvantages surrounding poverty, heath and housing have only been and continue to be heightened. POVERTY

In the UK po

distribution.13 BME communities are in general located in the most deprived urban areas, housed in the most run-down properties lacking amenities and support. The data reveals the severe disparities in the poverty rates between BME communities and their white counterparts. The prevailing poverty and income rates for Black and Minority Ethnic groups are grossly disproportionate to white poverty rates. The data shows that child poverty rates for children of African origin is 56%, for children of Pakistani origin the figure is 60% and for children of Bangladeshi origin the poverty rate is 72%, this is remarkable when compared with just 25% of poverty experienced by white children in the UK (CRE Legacy Report: 2007).14 In terms of housing the 2001 census shows that for home ownership the white British average is 72%. The Indian population possesses a notably higher degree of home ownership reaching nearly 80%, for Pakistanis home ownership is close to the average with 71%, however, nearly half of the Bangladeshi population reside within council or other

11 See REACH (2007) An independent report to Government on raising the aspirations and attainment of Black boys and young Black men, London 12 See The Equalities Review (2007), Fairness and F reedom: The F inal Report of the Equalities Review. Crown Copyright. 13 For more details see, http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ 14 Commission for Racial Equality (2007) A Lot Done, A Lot Still To Do Belmont Press


social housing (Peach 2006: 175).15 This is the second highest degree of dependency on social housing after the African population (Peach 2006: 175). In addition to this the segregation levels of the Bangladeshi community is still startling with almost a quarter (23%) of the total Bangladeshi population concentrated in the single London Borough of Tower Hamlets (Peach 2006: 177). At the intra-urban level in 1991, it was reported that the Bangladeshi population in Britain was the most segregated of all ethnically marked

BME populations continue to live in the most deprived areas as Thandi (2006) points out:

forty-four most deprived local authorities in the country (Social exclusion Unit, 2000). These are areas that suffer from multiple deprivation, especially from poor levels of public infrastructure-education, transport and social services. This leads to a cycle of economic deprivation, low business development and low employment generation. Successive governments have attempted to tackle this problem, but no

16 It is also crucial to work on public perceptions of poverty as a groundswell for change that encourages the political will for action. The inclusion of a socio economic duty in the Equality Bill 2009 alongside recent discussions at the EHRC appear to reflect a growing public demand for more work to be done to tackle class and poverty issues in the UK. The proposed duty however, remains pitched at a strategic level and does not require detailed action and there is also the danger that this element will be lost in the final Act. The JRF are also concerned about public attitudes towards the issues surrounding poverty and the JRF 2009 report found that British social attitudes reflected the following: Only 20% believe that poverty is a result of social injustice, 34% believe it is an inevitable part of

life, 27% think it is lazines

While we are concerned with measures of poverty and its consequences, we also constantly remind ourselves that poverty is not a necessary condition of a poor standard of life. Health, education, security and social connectedness all are important factors towards quality of life, these however are not adequately reflected in GDP.17 Only by understanding the way in which BME communities are excluded in specific contexts is it possible for policy-makers and planners to take initiatives that can bring about meaningful action (Sayyid: 2005).

panel Survey. Newham Council is in north-east London and the borough (city district) with the largest percentage of postcolonial ethnic minorities in the UK. It is an area of low skills, low income, poor housing, which at the same time has within it pockets of great affluence,

As a consequence it is a district which is experiencing growing economic and social inequalities. The decision to commission a detailed survey over 5 years providing information that contradicts common sense

15 - A Postcolonial People, Hurst: London. 16 See A Postcolonial People, Hurst: London. 17 Stiglitz, Joseph. Towards a Better Measure of Well-Being Financial Times 13th September 2009

explanations is bound to be useful. For example, the underlying assumption of council

was due to their lack of qualifications. As a result the Council invested heavily in training. What the preliminary results of the Household Survey showed was that despite gaining qualifications, the impact on unemployment rates for ethnic minorities was not as expected. In other words, the ability of trained members of ethnic minorities to convert their training into better and more secure employment was relatively poor. Such a conclusion required a re-assessment of the policy, which assumed that extensive training of ethnic minorities

18

We have a level playing field. We keep following the rules, trying to shoot for goal but the

We all need to lobby MPs and Peers in the House of Lords from December onwards. We should press upon them the need to ensure that there is no regression from the Race Relations Amendment act and that the requirements for race equality schemes and all the specific duties should remain. It is also important that all the inspectorates and the EHRC step up the monitoring of compliance. Then once the bill becomes an Act (presuming that it does) we will need to work with a new government to ensure we get the best deal for race equality. For more information visit the government Equalities Office website

This link gives information on how a bill becomes an Act through all its readings: http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage_bill/index.htm

This link gives information about the passage of the Equality Bill through parliament: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2008-09/equality.html

YOU CAN GET MORE INFORMATION ABOUTTHE BILL FROM THE GOVERNMENT EQUALITIES WEBSITE: http://www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_bill.aspx

ANDTHE EHRCWEBSITE: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/government-equalities-office-specificduties-consultation

ALSO THE EQUALITYAND DIVERSITY FORUM: http://www.edf.org.uk

18 More information on Newham Council Household Panel Survey can be found at: http://www.newham.info/research/NHPS.htm


http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage_bill/index.htm

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage_bill/index.htm

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2008-09/equality.html

http://www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_bill.aspx

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/government-equalities-office-specific-duties-consultation

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/government-equalities-office-specific-duties-consultation

http://www.edf.org.uk/

http://www.newham.info/research/NHPS.htm


OPERATION BLACK VOTE http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/key-equalities-decisions-passed-to-next-government

RACE ONTHEAGENDA http://www.rota.org.uk

Response to specific duties consultation based on Consultations in Liverpool, London and Leicester

Three roundtable events were held in conjunction with JUST West Yorkshire, AFIADO Web solutions, Migrant Workers North West, The Race Equality Centre Leicester and the 1990 Trust and included over 90 representatives from NGOs including race

Public authorities from Norfolk, Essex, Northampton, Nottingham, Derby, Manchester, Liverpool, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, London boroughs.

1.0 EQUANOMICS UK

Equanomics UK is a community-based movement to assist the transition from poverty to equality, from economic disadvantage to parity. It approaches work on racial equality via economic justice. Equanomics seeks a level playing field for all communities. Focusing on wage inequalities, international trade policies, the impact of credit, loans and debt, and the impact of poverty on social conditions such as education, employment, health and housing, it has a UK steering group that meets

quarterly, a network of activists and organisations and a contact database of 5,000 individuals and organisations.

EQUANOMICS UK RESPONSE TO THE PROPOSALS FOR SPECIFIC DUTIES OF THE EQUALITY BILL

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/key-equalities-decisions-passed-to-next-government

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/key-equalities-decisions-passed-to-next-government

http://www.rota.org.uk/

The focus of Equanomics is to address structural inequality and achieve economic and racial equality. It will work to eradicate: Discriminatory and disproportionate poverty rates Discriminatory and disproportionate unemployment levels and income Discriminatory and disproportionate representation in private and public and

political spheres

2 . 0 I N TRO DU C TI O N

For many years race equality activists had argued that the Race Relations Act 1976 was inadequate in tackling racial inequalities in the UK. The murder of Stephen Lawrence propelled the debate and the Lawrence Inquiry called by Jack Straw MP resulted in the most thorough piece of race equality legislation across Europe -The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Its particular strength was the tools it offered to tackle institutional racism as defined by the Lawrence inquiry, which said that this was at the heart of the failures of policing in the Stephen Lawrence case. Many other British institutions also admitted institutional racism to be a factor in their organisations. The then Commission for Racial Equality developed codes and guidance for the new Act. Millions of pounds have been spent by public authorities in meeting the requirements of the Act including for Race Equality Schemes.

Now we potentially have a new Act which if it gets passed may not have any requirements for Race Equality Schemes

This is because 1. The new government will have the power to decide what specific duties are

attached to the Act

2. authorities themselves - and a suggestion that they may not have to cover all protected groups.

This could mean that the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 becomes redundant and we could be left with little more than the General Duty with requirements designed to tackle institutional racism over the last 10 years potentially ignored. This will constitute a regression from the race equality legislation that currently exists and must be avoided. Previously we have written about the growing questioning and denials of institutional racism, which seem to be part of a trend to move away from a focus on race equality and particularly structural race equality.

The dilemma we face as race equality protagonists is that the bill itself does actually make some improvements in general - particularly so for other equality areas and this is to be welcomed. However, where the existing race equality duties have been shown to be effective then there should be no regression, no dilution and no moving away from a clear statement of these duties. Where the current race equality duties could be improvements then these should be welcomed.

3.0 GENERAL POINTS



3.1 We agree that the public sector equality duty should apply for all protected grounds. This should encourage public bodies to recognise needs of Black and ethnic minority people who face disadvantage and discrimination and/or have particular needs where the ground of race is combined with one or more other protected grounds, for example sex, disability, age, sexual orientation or religion or belief.

3.2 We welcome that Clause 145 of the Equality Bill sets out core elements of the equality of opportunity and good relations duties; this should assist public bodies to understand the full extent of their general equality duty

3.3 WE THINK IT IS OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE THAT THERE REMAINS A REQUIREMENT TO TRAIN STAFF. In the RRAA specific duty for a race equality scheme, the requirement to train all staff in the use of the race equality scheme has resulted in many instances of which we know in a greater understanding of how to

organisation.

3.4 We welcome the socio economic duty and we would like to see proposals for how the implementation of this duty will be assessed and enforced. It has been our argument, in work programmes and presentations all over the UK, and some in Europe and the US during 2007 and 2008, that achieving any form of equality is not possible without economic justice. In addition we have suggested that the EHRC should have a cross cutting equality strand focusing on class and poverty and its intersection with other equality strands. We also know that the current financial climate affects the most disadvantaged, worst. And that many think in recession, equality work is a luxury. This double whammy of financial hardship and potential lack of attention to discriminatory practice especially in employment and financial matters means that BME communities could be worse off in the longer run economic duty is not just timely it is urgent. Had it been in place already then perhaps more attention would have been given to the effects of recession on accessing public sector services and on the individuals in communities most likely to be affected.

3.5 Equanomics welcomes the proposal in principle because it signals an attempt to reach the root causes of inequality. While not all roots of racism and discrimination stem from economic inequality (there are also political, historical, psychological and conceptual causes), tackling poverty will be key in achieving race equality. It also has major benefits for cohesion and integration. For it is evident that social integration reaches an impasse and cannot be realised unless economic integration is enabled and measurable racial and economic equality achieved. Social mobility is derailed without economic mobility and diversity cannot be valued until people recognise the value and economic contribution of BME and poor communities. Equanomics UK also advocate a shift in the balance from a pathological model of achieving race equality, which can at times place the problems in communities themselves to a model, which examines the structural and systemic inequality in society. As Rafael Behr says:

Rafael Behr Observer 15th June 2008:

one cultural and one economic. The cultural one is assimilation: setting a goal of a unified national identity and pushing people towards it, by shutting faith schools and banning public officials from wearing headscarves, for example.

The economic one is redistribution: addressing the problems of social mobility and poverty that actually cause tension between communities. Or it can go à la carte and try a bit of both. What it can't do is talk loosely about a policy of integration because, noble though it sounds, it doesn't

3.6 We note that the discussion paper proposes the duty should be at a strategic level and not at the point of service delivery. However this may need further consideration as there may be instances where service delivery needs to be specific with considered and targeted choices. Planning at strategic level may have little meaning without detail and direction.

3.7 Equanomics is particularly concerned at the high levels of poverty in some BME communities and the correlation to life opportunity.

CRE Legacy report

disproportionately more likely to be poor. Rates of child poverty are particularly high among children of African (56%), Pakistani (60%) and Bangladeshi (72%) origin, compared with a rate of 25% for white children. Young people from ethnic minority groups are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, and they are at higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Black and mixed race children are proportionately more likely to be found within the social care system and appear to stay in the system for longer than white children.

3.8 Although poverty and /or ethnicity is not a necessary precursor to involvement in crime, drugs, or lack of access to employment, good education, housing, health all the evidence points to them being significant variables. Hence we would advise that the duty requires a race and ethnicity correlation with socio economic analysis as a starting point for any strategic planning (and of course other equality strands).We agree with the Equal Rights Trust:

alleviate poverty should be coordinated with measures to combat discrimination, in the pursuit of full and effective equality.

3.9 The discussion paper before the specific duties consultation suggests that authorities maybe able to use existing data, in order not to burden them further and says there should be no prescription on the selected public authorities as to what inequalities should be addressed.


Firstly it is unclear about how selected public authorities will be chosen any potential exclusion should be the subject of consultation beforehand.

Secondly Equanomics thinks that this could potentially be counter productive as it may lead to plans and This does not mean we necessarily favour prescribing the target but instead argues for the authorities to develop analysis, which relate specifically intra and inter the Equality strands. Then they must use the analysis to prioritise and target actions. Priorities should be decided on a formula which will need detailed consideration but for example it could be that the highest priority is work with the most disenfranchised by poverty on a given range of indicators. If this is left unstated there is a danger that root issues caused by or as a result of poverty will be missed. And while we agree that it is important to minimise the burden especially time spent on research and analysis it may also require that additional information is needed. There needs to be a correlative and comparative set of data on socio economic position and a range of other factors. Equanomics is of the view that the starting point for each city or county, should conduct a race/ethnicity and economic analysis of their area and to include data across equality strands and for the whole population so as to assess where to target attention on alleviating socio economic disadvantage and poverty.

This should at least cover

Employment /unemployment Pover t y l e ve l s Regeneration schemes and outcomes Private sector and businesses: trading practices, level of contribution to the area

in employment, community support etc H o u s i n g H e a l t h Crime / Criminal Just ice E d u c a t i o n

Mig r an t l a bou r Wage levels /fair pay

3.10 It will be critical to involve the Regional Development Agencies at all stages of the progress of the socio economic duty, but we think they will be particularly useful in conducting these analysis and probably have much of the data already. What they may not have is the cross- referencing across Equality strands with socio economic position.

3.11 It is similarly important for public authorities to recognise and publicise the economic benefits and contribution of BME communities in any socio economic analysis as relating to, for example:

TAXPAYERS AND CONSUMERS

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in 2007/2008 make up important segments of local and national economies, recent figures indicate


that by 2011 that total will be as much as £300 billion. Black and Asian consumers are also estimated to earn up to £156 billion after tax income, with young men being the bigger consumers and spending £32 billion every year.1

1Research by Weber Shandwick Multicultural Communications www.webershandwick.co.uk

4.0 SPECIFIC RESPONSESTO CONSULTATION QUESTIONS

Q 1: Do you think the criteria set out above are the right ones? Please give your reasons.

We would expect specific equality duties to be imposed on at least the full range of public authorities that are already subject to specific duties for race, disability or gender

Q2:Are there any other criteria we should use? If so, what do you suggest?

Q3: Do you agree that public bodies should have a specific duty to publish equality objectives with reference to the relevant evidence and their wider general Equality Duty obligations?

We agree that any Equality Schemes or objectives must be based on relevant evidence and the general Equality Duty obligations but expect that this evidence gathering should include the use of Impact Assessments. We also think that objectives are only viable once a race equality scheme based on functions and policies has been constructed.

We do not wish to see any narrowing of the application of specific duties. We do not agree that public authorities should no longer be required to produce equality schemes. In our experience this duty has required public authorities to consider, possibly for the first time, the extent to which each of their functions is relevant to their equality obligations.

Q4: Do you agree that public bodies should set out the steps they intend to take to achieve their equality objectives?

We agree that public authorities should be required to set out equality objectives and steps to achieve those objectives. Once an equality scheme has been produced, then we see equality setting as a necessary next step; an authority should be expected to draw on the contents of their scheme in order to meet their general equality duty in respect of all of their functions.

Q5: Do you agree that public bodies should be required to implement the steps they have set out for themselves within the business cycle period unless it would be unreasonable or impractical to do so?

Yes

Q6: Do you agree that public bodies should be required to review their objectives every three years? If not, what time-period do you suggest instead?


http://www.webershandwick.co.uk/


They should review them when they review the business plan and to reiterate the points above objectives must be based on Equality schemes and impact assessments.

Q7: Do you agree that public bodies should set equality objectives taking into account priority areas set by the relevant Secretary of State?

No but any scheme or objectives should involve the ethical consultation - already indicated as requirements by the GEO - to require meaningful involvement in the drawing up of schemes, setting objectives, assessing the evidence etc.

Q8: Do you agree that public bodies should not be required to set equality

objectives in respect of each protected characteristic?

No. Consultation should relate to how a public authority will meet its general duty in respect of all 8 protected grounds; any decision by a public authority to adopt equality objectives that do not apply to all 8 grounds should be preceded by full consultation and the reasons for this decision should be stated in the objectives document itself.

Q9: Do you agree that public bodies should be required to report annually on progress against their equality objectives, but that the means by which they do so should not be prescribed in legislation?

Public bodies should report annually but there should a template for reporting which can make the job of monitoring easier and after this supplemental information can be added - so allowing for consistency but also creativity.

Q 10: Do you agree that public bodies with 150 or more employees should be required to publish their gender pay gap, their ethnic minority employment rate and their disability employment rate? We would welcome views on the benefits of these proposals in encouraging public authorities to be more transparent. See q13 below

Q 11: Do you agree with the proposal to use the overall median gender pay gap figure? Please give your reasons. If not, what other method would you suggest and why?

Equanomics would also like to see a measure being introduced for the employment gap and pay gap for Black and Minority Ethnic communities

Q 12: Do you have any evidence of how much it would cost to produce and publish this information, and of what the benefits of producing and publishing this information might be?

Q 13: Do you agree with the proposal not to require public bodies to report employment data in relation to the other characteristics protected under

the Equality Duty? If not, what other data do you think should be reported on?

The duty on public authorities to monitor their workforce should be equivalent to the current workforce monitoring requirements that apply as part of the race equality specific duties. Without full evidence regarding the impact of race in their employment decisions, public authorities will not be able to meet their general equality duty to eliminate discrimination and to advance equality of opportunity in carrying out their employment function.

Q 1 4: Do you agree with the move away from an emphasis on describing process, to requiring public bodies to demonstrate how they have taken evidence of the impact on equality into account in the design of their key policy and service delivery initiatives and the difference this has made?

We do not agree that public authorities should cease to be required to carry out equality impact assessments. From our experience, it has been this duty that has made officers working in the public sector fully aware of the ways in which the policies and practices of public bodies affect different groups within the communities

they serve. To remove this duty would be seen by community organisations as a serious dilution of the equality obligations of public authorities

Q 15: Do you agree that public bodies should have a specific duty when setting their equality objectives, deciding on the steps towards their achievement and reviewing their progress in achieving them to take reasonable steps to involve and consult employees, service users and other relevant groups who have an interest in how it carries out its functions or where appropriate their representatives; and in particular take reasonable steps to consult and involve the protected groups for whom the duty is designed to deliver benefits?

We strongly welcome the proposed requirement for public authorities to consult and involve their employees, their service users, others who have an interest in carrying out all of their functions and in particular designed to deliver duty should apply, as currently under the disability equality duty, to the development of an equality scheme as well as to setting equality objectives and steps to achieve those objectives and review of progress.

Q 16: Do you think that imposing specific equality duties on contracting authorities in relation to their public procurement activities are needed, or are the best way to help deliver equality objectives? Do you think such an approach should be pursued at this time?

We strongly endorse the proposal to require all public authorities to ensure that the importance of their procurement function in meeting their general equality duty is fully reflected in their equality objectives and the steps they will take to meet those objectives

Q 17: Do you agree that contracting authorities should be required to state



how they will ensure equality factors are considered as part of their procurement activities?

There is a need for specific duties requiring equality to be taken into account at each stage of the procurement process. Critically there must be a requirement for public authorities to monitor the equality performance of contractors they engage to carry out their functions.

Equanomics UK is concerned with the return for the money BME communities spend and contribute to the tax base and how we use this economic leverage in a collective effort to increase economic opportunity for all our communities. The private sector is a key stakeholder in the drive for economic justice and yet there is so very little in legislative requirements with regard to how they disperse equality. It is important that the private sector is also looped into the potentially good work of public authorities on socio-economic inequality especially re improved employment of BME people and the purchase of products from BME businesses. Hence we would like to see inclusion in the Single Equalities Bill stronger requirements for procurement at every stage of the contracting process with specific requirements and measurable goals and to have this linked in with the socio economic duty.

Q 18: Do you agree that contracting authorities should be required to consider using equality- related award criteria where they relate to the subject matter of the contract and are proportionate?

YES

Q 19: Do you agree that contracting authorities should be required to consider incorporating equality-related contract conditions where they relate to the performance of the contract?

Yes but we also believe that it needs to be a wider requirement than just for the contract. Contract conditions should include the equality environment of the whole company or contractor.

Q20: What would be the impact of a regulatory proposal aimed at dealing with suppliers who have breached discrimination law? What might be the benefits, costs and risks?

This would enable public authorities to avoid contracting with suppliers who are not prepared to comply with discrimination law. To exclude contractors who have had a finding of breach of discrimination law in a court or tribunal may be excluded under EU procurement law. Both EU law and the general equality duty require actions to be proportionate. Public bodies should consider all relevant factors before deciding to exclude, including steps such a supplier may have taken to improve their equality performance.


Q21: Do you support the proposal to establish a national equality standard which could be used in the procurement process? If so, do you believe this is achievable through a specific duty or is this better tackled through a non-legislative approach? Are there any practical issues that would need to be considered?

national equality standard for procurement and it should be a specific duty for public authorities to meet the standard. There is already a great deal of guidance on procurement which is not being followed because it is not a legislative requirement.

Q22: Which of the above four models do you consider achieves the best balance between joined- up working and senior accountability for equality outcomes, while avoiding unnecessary burdens? Please explain why.

Model 1 as it requires relation to the national equality objectives and therefore a

Q23: Do you have any other suggestions how this duty could be remodelled to retain the valuable features of senior accountability and joined-up working, whilst avoiding unnecessary burdens?

Equanomics believes that there should be a government (cross department) National Equality Objectives Plan with targets and this then should be allocated by relevant policy area to the relevant secretary of State. The plan should be based on extensive national consultation across equality areas every three years. This consultation should be conducted in partnership with the appropriate equality

management at senior level and in implementation at local level

Q24: Are there any specific requirements, other than those that we have proposed, which you think are essential to ensure that public bodies deliver equality outcomes in an effective and proportionate manner?

Equanomics suggests specific duties related to the socio-economic duty as above in 3.9. Q25: What role do you think the guidance from EHRC should play in helping public bodies implement the specific duties in a sensible and proportionate manner? What do you think it would be helpful for such guidance to cover?

The guides and codes should cover the Why, What, When, How, Who and Where of how to implement the entire Act and the details of specific duties. It is particularly important in our view that Public bodies understand the imperatives of the General Duty. This will be even more critical if the proposals for equality objectives become the specific duties. As we have said previously this is not our preferred position.

Specific training packages should also be developed.

DR. RICHARD STONE STEPHEN LAWRENCE REVIEW AN INDEPENDENT COMMENTARY

24th February 2009 10.45

the ministers who are here today and those of you who have walked this difficult road with me for the last fifteen years. It has been 15 years, 10 months and 2 days since the devastating murder of my son, Stephen Lawrence. The the police into action to track down his killers.

But he was Black and in their eyes, his death did not warrant the same urgency as that of a white person.

In the years that followed, our family had to fight all levels of the British justice system, which has repeatedly denied us justice for his death. It took the establishing of the public inquiry by the new Labour Government in 1997 to expose the incompetence and the institutional racism that we experienced at the hands of both the police and the justice system.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report and its presentation to Parliament in the House of Commons.

I welcome the several reviews marking the tenth anniversary such as the academic review produced by Portsmouth University examining the shortfalls in policing

murder and what changes if any have taken place over the last ten years.

It is unfortunate that I am not able to stand here before you today and say with full confidence that we are living in a renewed and reformed society, in which the same mistakes would not and could not be repeated.

The Inquiry came at a time when, through years of over-policing and discrimination, confidence in the police service was severely lacking within the Black community. The Inquiry into murder put the British justice system under public scrutiny in a way that no other case had before, exposing not only the many flaws of the Metropolitan police service but also the lack of respect they showed towards the Black community that they served.

The Lawrence inquiry vindicated what we had been saying all along, namely that the racism and the incompetence of the police service was the root cause of this gross miscarriage of justice.

In the early days, after the publication, some of the police officers tried to undermine the report. There were some who said the recommendations from the Inquiry hindered them in their work, feeling unable to stop individuals in the fear that they would be labelled as racist. The fact was that some officers did not see the need to

DOREEN LAWRENCE TRANSCRIPT OF HER SPEECH TO THE 10 YEARS ON FROM LAWRENCE CONFERENCE February 09

change their behaviour towards the black community. And just to take this particular point- what saddens me today is that 15 years after the death of Stephen, there has been no long term drop in stop and searches in the black community. Today, black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than White people this is not progress. And in spite of this the government have introduced a new method of recording stops to cut back on paperwork which I believe will further take away holding police officers to account for their actions. This can only lead to a further decrease in trust and confidence in the police service and hinder effective monitoring across the justice system.

One of the main recommendations of the Inquiry was to develop the quality of training in the police service. Since then is a lot of work has been done to improve skills at a leadership level, the question we need to ask ourselves is how much impact has this had on the work of the officers on the beat, those officers who have regular contact with members of the public? Would front line officers react any differently today if faced with the same situation on the night of 22nd April 1993. Would Stephen be dealt with in the way you would expect an injured man should be? Would they automatically see a guilty black man or would they see a young person bleeding on a London street?

The most important need is to make sure that you are providing the right service for the community you are serve. This should be the priority. The excuse used is always lack of funding, funding to stop the police from delivering the right service that is appropriate.

Over the last ten years I have worked with the metropolitan police service and Government departments, independently supporting the implementation of some of the recommendations that came out of the Lawrence Inquiry. I have been encouraged by the work I recently witnessed when I visited the West Midland police service with Richard Stone- one of the Advisors of the Lawrence Public Inquiry. We were able to see, first hand, how by the police working with the community had increased the confidence of the community by them working closely together. We have also seen improvements in police investigation through the use of family liaison officers, although the role of these officers is still quite blurred between supporting the families and the investigating team. I have spoken to Black families who are saying that the liaison officers who are assigned to them are not giving them information as to how their investigation is going. The danger here is the Black families who experiencing loss are made to feel as if they are perpetrators rather than victims.

Another area that I feel particularly passionate about, being both a grandmother and the custodian of the young people at the Stephen Lawrence Trust are the Inquiry recommendations relating to prevention and the roll of the education department and wider problems in the education system as a whole. Only a few months ago a study from Warwick University concluded that Black Caribbean pupils were subject to institutionalized racism in English schools. Today fewer than three per cent of head teachers are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and only five per cent of teachers. What worries me is the relation of these figures to those of exclusion rates for black children, in London alone 80% of excluded boys are black. As with the police force, the education department must be representative of the people that it


DR. RICHARD STONE STEPHEN LAWRENCE REVIEW AN INDEPENDENT COMMENTARY

serves and there must be vociferous implementation of measures to address these issues to stop children falling into the criminal justice system at a later date.

As important as it is to acknowledge that the positive steps that have been taken since the Inquiry, we are in danger of becoming complacent, by lingering over the successes and forgetting the obstacles that we still must overcome.

And yet, as of late I see the Government agenda moving from the issue of Race to mainstream equalities and the more socially acceptable notion of diversity. The question we should be asking is, have we fully addressed the issues surrounding Race? Do the police force and other public bodies think they have achieved their goals of addressing institutional racism- could they be accused of the same today? Only on Friday it was announced that central targets for ethnic minority recruitment into the police force are to be dropped- why? When the target for 2009 was 7 per cent representation and it has taken us 10 years to get to 4. 1 per cent, why is it deemed appropriate to pull out of the race when it is only half run?

I was also disheartened about the merging of the Commission for Racial Equality to the new Equality and Human Rights Commission and my views are shared by many in the black community, I see this as the watering down of race relations at a time when race really needs to be on the agenda. I am told that by having Trevor Phillips as Chair, we have a champion to address the race issue- this does not assure me that the needs of the black community will be represented- what would assure me would be if we were given a statutory race committee and the needs of ethnic minority communities were likely to be met by the upcoming single equalities bill.

The Government needs to recognise and acknowledge the economic, social and cultural contributions that minority communities have made throughout this country s history. They now need to take steps to ensure that those communities that have shaped modern Britain are not left behind and treated like second class citizens.

I have listened over the years to many plans, target around race, diversity and disproportionally. Sometimes our collective failure to make difficult choices has the greatest impact on those who are the most vulnerable, and so we must step out of our comfort zones and ask the questions which some would not have us ask.

More than ever there is a greater urgency to bring about change, to ensure that our - to all, not just the privileged or for those from a

particular race or creed but those who reside in the periphery too- all deserve to have access to services and to justice in this progressive society- that would be the most fitting legacy to Stephen.

Thank you to all those of you that helped to initiate the implementation of the recommendations, but please do remember that this is a still a working progress and our pace is that of change, and change, real change always takes time.

Earlier this month I witnessed the inauguration of the first Black president of the United States of American, Barack Hussain Obama- one of so many events that have

come to pass that I wished that my son Stephen could have lived to see. What was so powerful about the Obama campaign was how he was able to move away from race and focus on the American people, he said we wan

This is one of the occasions when I would like to us in this country to catch pneumonia if needs be. We need to get to the position where we can see beyond black and white and work as equal partners to create a truly United Kingdom.

Doreen Lawrence Feb 09

RESPONDING TO SERIOUS VIOLENT CRIME:

Professor Ben Bowling Kings College London

Editors note : the statistics in this article relate to London and specifically Black people of African Caribbean origin, however, the central thesis could be one applied across the UK we would like to call for more research here or if anyone knows of existing evidence please let us know..

Bowling writes .....In my opinion, it is not only the case that the criminal justice system has failed actually made matters worse. While the roots of crime are in social and economic exclusion, the problem of crime within Black communities has been exacerbated by thirty years of institutional racism resulting in over

RESPONDING TO SERIOUS VIOLENT CRIME: AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN A POUND OF PUNISHMENT

policing, unfairness in criminal justice and the toxic effects of prison. However, hard policy makers might wish it to be otherwise, the criminal justice system is evidently part of the problem of criminalisation and not part of the solution.

I. INTRODUCTION This paper examines the factors underlying serious violent crime, how the problem should be approached and possible solutions. It first looks at the extent of serious violent crime, focusing on homicide and knife homicide in order to be clear about the extent and nature of the problem. It sets out a reading of the research on the roots of violence, at the impact of current criminal justice policies in terms of the outcomes of violence reduction.

I have also drawn on my role as specialist advisor to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee inquiry into young Black people in the criminal justice system that reported in June 2007.The question of how far this issue of serious violent crime is, is one that is of specific concern to the Black community is rarely far from the discussion, so I think it is worth treating this head on. I also think that it is instructive to examine the experience of Black people in the criminal justice system not only in its own right but also in what it reveals of our treatment of the most socially excluded and marginalised in our society.

II.THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF SERIOUS VIOLENCE Serious violence takes various forms from drunken brawls in and outside bars and pubs, among friends fallen out, between enemies and rivals from neighbouring areas. Violence can be committed in pursuit of profit, with a sexual motive and or targeted at specific people such as the case of domestic violence, homophobic and racist violence, state violence against citizens and myriad other instances of harassment, assault and threatening behaviour. Ideally, of course, a violent crime strategy should deal with all of these facets.

The problem with all of these forms of crime is that they are difficult to measure, and it is therefore difficult to reach firm conclusions about the rises and falls in violent crime. That is not to say that they are unimportant or impossible to measure, only that firm conclusions are best drawn from the best data such as homicide. This is a relatively stable phenomenon, and it is generally reliably recorded and a long with that, some basic description of victims and the weapon involved.

What the homicide data from London show is that there was a gradual increase in homicide until 2003 after which it has declined (See figure 1).

FIGURE 1, HOMICIDE IN LONDON



Concerning knife crime, among homicides, the number involving a sharp instrument has remained quite static over the past three years, deaths by shooting have increased against a general decline in homicidal violence (see figure 2).

FIGURE 2, HOMICIDE IN LONDON BY METHOD OF KILLING

victims. The number of children that is people under the age of 18 killed in the past few years increased sharply in 2007 (see figure 3).This pattern is behind the levels of public anxiety that exploded in the media during 2008.Judging from figures on homicide, the problem has not been a massive increase in knife homicide, but a disturbing increase in the murder of children.

FIGURE 3, HOMICIDE IN LONDON BYAGE.

In London it is evident that the overwhelming majority of homicide victims are White (see figure 4).

FIGURE 4, HOMICIDE IN ENGLAND &WALES,BY ETHNIC APPEARANCE OFTHE VICTIM

communities, especially among young homicide victims. According to Marian murder victims and one

quarter of all female murder victims are Black. This rises to more than six out of ten



of -17 year old age range and nearly four out of ten among girls of this age group (figure 5).

FIGURE 5, HOMICIDE IN LONDON BYAGEAND ETHNICITY

The statistics on patterns of homicide suggest all while all communities are affected and despite divisions of geography, class, the black community bears the greatest impact of serious violent crime, in terms of loss of young lives.

III. EXPLAINING SERIOUS VIOLENT CRIME Serious violent crime is associated with social and economic inequality and poverty. The social geography of homicide shows that it is concentrated in poor communities. Fitzgerald et al found that the young people at greatest risk of invo

neighbourhoods where income inequality was greatest. Other dimensions of social exclusion may play a role such as school disaffection, truancy, suspension and permanent exclusion from school, academic failure, survival stress arising from a lack of marketable skills, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of positive role models, family conflict and breakdown, child abuse, experiences of local authority care, homelessness, mental health problems, bereavement and exposure to violence.

which leads, in turn, to offending where legitimate routes to obtaining ready cash needed to purchase the objects of desire (and trappings of success) are blocked. The pursuit of excitement, status and power are additional attractions of crime. Within socially excluded communities, the criminal economy

especially in illegal drugs competes with legitimate labour markets. In this context, drug dealers, internecine violence and the use

of weapons including guns and firearms can become prevalent. Existing neighbourhood rivalries take on a greater significance when loose affiliations among young people become connected with street gangs and organised crime groups.

Poverty, political powerlessness and the inability to overcome structural constraints to markers of success such as money and social status cause alienation, rage, frustration, lack of hope and pervasive nihilism. Some contend that masculine cultural adaptations to social exclusion emphasize the display of toughness to protect against disrespect, loss of reputation or violations of autonomy. A

to survive life spent on the street. In the most extreme circumstances, young people

Socio-legal theorists contend that conformity stems from bonds between individual and society underpinned state. From this perspective, the experience of unfairness in policing and the administration of justice contribute to disaffection, the rejection of conventional values and to law breaking. Where disaffection is extreme and confidence in the criminal justice system collapses, young people feel vulnerable to victimisation leading some to carry weapons for personal security. In this context, violence becomes accepted as a means of self- This results in reprisals and an escalation of violence.

IV.THE CURRENT APPROACH The current approach to criminal justice which has been in play for nearly thirty years has been aptly justice policy has been designed to satisfy a perceived or actual demand from a public frustrated by persistently high crime rates. Tough policing, stiffer sentences and more jail time are among the policies typically proposed.

As a result of a punitive approach to criminal justice policy, the powers of the police have been extended to an unprecedented degree, stop and search has become more extensive, the numbers of people arrested and passing through the criminal justice system have increased, sentences have lengthened and more people are being sent to prison for longer. The prison population has more than doubled since 1993 and may soon be three times the number it was a decade and a half ago.

The punitive approach has fallen disproportionately harshly on the Black population. Black people are six times as likely to be detained on the street for questioning and for the purposes of a search by the police (see figure 6); they are more likely to be arrested and charged rather than reprimanded or warned; they are more likely to be remanded in custody and, when convicted at court, more likely to be sentenced to prison and given longer custodial sentences.



FIGURE 6, STOPAND SEARCH PER 1,000 POPULATION, BY ETHNICITY

It was reported last year that perhaps as many of three quarters of young Black males are now on the DNA database. While patterns are more complex and nuanced when examined in close detail, and the explanations more complex still, this general picture of exceptionally high rates of punitive intervention, from policing to prisons, has persisted for over three decades.

V.THE BLACK PRISON POPULATION The punitive approach is a rapidly rising prison population, a rise which is particularly pronounced with respect to the Black population. In 1985, when relevant figures were published for the first time, just fewer than four thousand Black people were in English prisons. By the year 2005, there were more than 12,500 more than three times as many (see figure 7).

FIGURE 7 THE GROWING BLACK PRISON POPULATION, ENGLAND &WALES

Prisoners of African-one Black parent; source Home Office s.95 reports.

If we restrict ourselves to British nationals, the numbers reduce by about a third, which equates to about 10% of the UK prison population. The Black prison population is therefore about five times greater than you would expect from numbers in the general population.

This is a pattern which is not static, but becoming more acute as the years go by. If we look at the change in sentenced prisoners in the UK in the first five years of the twenty first century, it is clear that criminal justice policy has had a profound impact on the UK Black population with an increase of more than a two thirds increase among adults in their twenties.

FIGURE 8. PERCENTAGE CHANGE IN THE NUMBER OF SENTENCED PRISONERS BYAGE AND ETHNIC GROUP BETWEEN 2000 AND 2005

Source Marian FitzGerald, graph in Home Affairs Committee report on Young Black People and Criminal Justice.

If we look at per capita figures, Black British nationals are imprisoned at a rate of about 1,500 per 100,000 of the population. That means that about 1.5% of the Black population in England and Wales is in custody. That includes males and females of all ages. There are no figures published on the per capita prison population for particular social groups take young Black men, for example but my guesstimate

at high single figures, perhaps higher. If we asked what that equates to in terms of lifetime custody rates, my guesstimate, again, would be somewhere into double figures.

VI. COMMUNITY IMPACT It could be argued that this degree of punishment is not simply for its own sake, nor merely for the purposes of demonstrating Home Office ministerial muscle. It can be


argued that the purpose of punishment is rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation and crime control. Let us consider the impact of punishment on crime control in a moment, first I would like to highlight the well known iatrogenic effects of punishment and how these bear most heavily on those who are already most marginalised. 1 . CRIMINALISATION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION We know that prison destroys families, separating husbands from wives and parents from their children. We know that it ends employment, reduces employability and hinders the acquisition of skills. Prison drains financial and cultural capital from individuals, from their families and the wider community. Rather than making it generally less likely that an individual will re offend, prison makes it more likely, not just for the reasons already mentioned, but also as a consequence of the phenomenon of prisonisation, which entrenches criminal identity.

It is also important to remember that the people who end up in prison tend to be people who are already experiencing social exclusion. Most are already unemployed, many are homeless and a majority have had experience of local authority care; that is they had already experienced being looked after by the state prior to their becoming involved in offending.

2. DISAFFECTION The experience of extensive, disproportionate and repetitive police stop/search, unfairness in the courts, and of prisons where perhaps in some jails a quarter, half or sometimes more of the population is Black reinforces a longstanding perception of unfairness. This destroys the trust and confidence in the criminal justice system among individuals and the wider community, and unpicks the belief in the legitimacy of the criminal justice process. When legitimacy collapses, young people come to believe that the only source of protection available to them is the

demeanour.

3. IMPACT ON CRIME What is the impact of the punitive approach on serious violent crime? Returning to the statistics that I started this presentation with, I think that it is critically important to keep London violent crime statistics in perspective. That is, London remains one of the safest big cities in the world. Serious violent crime resulting in death remains extremely rare, with fewer than 160 homicides last year and rarely more than 200 in any given year.

If we take a long view over the past thirty years, say the fact is that increases in punitiveness have gone hand in hand with steady increases in serious violent crime.

effect. Perhaps the growth in punishment is simply a result of the growth in serious violent crime. Although there has been a reduction in homicide in the past few years, as we have seen, homicides with knives and guns have not declined in the ways that would have been anticipated were a punitive approach the panacea to the problem of serious violent crime.

In my opinion, it is not only the case that the criminal justice system has failed to solve a crisis of community


the roots of crime are in social and economic exclusion, the problem of crime within Black communities has been exacerbated by thirty years of Institutional Racism resulting in over policing, unfairness in criminal justice and the toxic effects of prison. However, hard policy makers might wish it to be otherwise, the criminal justice system is evidently part of the problem of criminalisation and not part of the solution.

VII.ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES The new Labour administration was elected more than a decade ago on the

You might argue that the government talks the talk extremely well on social inclusion and, to some extent, has been walking the walk. Yes, we have a Social Exclusion Taskforce; we have Sure Start; we have the Youth Inclusions Partnerships (YIPs). It has also been acknowledged that progress

absolutely essential that measures to create the inclusive society are appropriate, relevant and accessible to our most disadvantaged, excluded and disaffected young people, among whom are disproportionately found numbers of Black and minority ethnic communities. I think we do know what to do and what works. We know that early years education helps protect children at risk. Evidence from a 40 year follow up from the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project evaluation concludes that every dollar invested in preschool education returns $1 3 in reductions in crime, improvements in school success and in earning potential. We know that supporting families when their children are going through the peer group parenting, anti social behaviour and crime.

matches between a volunteer adult mentor and a young person. With carefully structured and managed programmes, supported by training, collaboration between the volunteer, the young person, their parents and the Big Brothers Big Sisters agency, the pairs meet for three or four hours, three times a month for at least a year. A randomly assigned study of just over 1,000 10 16 year olds, found that, 18 months after involvement in the programme, the participants were 46% less likely to start using drugs or alcohol and one third less likely to be involved in violence. It saw significant improvements in school attendance; schoolwork had improved; so had peer and family relationships.

We know that the provision of mental health services in the community to deal with youth depression, anger, frustration, disaffection and disillusion have benefits beyond the

more meaningful. We know that children who are actively involved in sport, theatre, drama, music, education and training are less likely to offend than those who are not. We know that specialist youth workers, whether in youth clubs or out on the streets, peer counsellors, street pastors, community conflict resolution, and gang exit programmes are all making a contribution to community wellbeing and community safety.

Through their Arches drop in centre and their outreach work, there is a comprehensive package of social care to exceptionally vulnerable children. They are supported through social work,


psychotherapy and counselling, employment advice, youth offending programmes, drug

on to say it works, but company of Camila Batmanghelidjh, seen

her work or heard her on the radio or on television knows it is an outstanding and effective way of responding to our most damaged young people.

We need support these programmes and also to study them more closely to draw out the good practice to enable their success to be replicated.

VIII . CONCLUSIONS The call for a preventive approach based on the principle of social inclusion is not

It means responding to children and young people at the vulnerable points in their lives. It means responding to young people when they make the transition from primary to secondary school. It means supporting them when they take their first false steps, when they first come into contact with the criminal justice system. It means providing support long before they became cynical or hardened through their contact with the criminal justice system. For those that have already have been convicted of crime or imprisoned, an inclusive approach requires us to provide support on leaving custody to help ex-offenders to settle back into the communities to which they will inevitably return.

An inclusive approach is about investing in children and young people to enable them to lead fulfilled, productive and safe lives. A community reduces crime and, if they do not, the best that the police and prisons can do is pick up the pieces after the fact. Properly funding effective community based approaches to crime reduction is not only a road to humanity and social justice, but one that leads to a safer society. The guiding logic is quite simple: it is always better to prevent a young person from drifting down a pathway towards crime than it is to punish him or her when he does. In a phrase, when it comes to violent crime, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of punishment.

WHOSE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?

Geoff Tansey1

'Over 75% of the population are agriculturalists but there cannot be much spirit of self government about us, if we take away or allow others to take away from them almost the whole results of their labour. Our salvation can only come through the farmer. Neither the lawyers , not the doctors, not the rich landlords are going to secure it'

Mahatma Gandhi Varanasi India 4th February 1916

sustainably by 2050. We need major changes in policy and practice, which cannot be addressed by change simply within the food system but much broader changes in the

PATENT POWER, GLOBAL RULES, GM AND THE FUTURE CONTROL OF FOOD

economic and political system of which food is a part. In fact, food shows well why our current economic model is flawed, with almost a billion underfed and over a billion over fed people. And while the great majority of the underfed are in the poor countries of the south, overconsumption and obesity affects not just the rich countries of the north but also those in the south, as they copy dietary patterns and lifestyles from the north. An equitable, healthy, safe and sustainable food system requires an ecologically-based economics of enough, not one of continuous growth and expansion of consumption. Around the world, soils differ, climate differs, weather differs and to have sustainable, secure food supplies requires using land in different locally-adapted ways, building upon natural cycles.

1 Geoff Tansey is a writer and consultant on food, agriculture and development. He has degrees in soil science, and history and social studies of science and technology. He helped found and edit the journal Food Policy in the mid-1970s. His books include The Food System - A Guide (1995) and The Meat Business - Devouring a Hungry Planet (1999). Since 1998, he has worked on the impact of changing global rules, especially those on development. He co-edited Negotiating Health - Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines (2006) and his most recent book, co-edited with Tasmin Rajotte, is The future control of food -An guide to international negotiations and rules on intellectual property, biodiversity and food security (2008). In June 2005, he received one oprovide support for five years. He is also a member and a director of The Food Ethics Council, an honorary research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University. See www.tansey.org

This article is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Ecologist in November 2008.

Speaking in January 2009 about the global financial crisis the OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurría, said: The pain and anguish of the current global economic crisis were caused by a series of massive failures in the developed countries. We are in our current fix because of an excess of financial innovation, driven by ever-increasing thirst for short-term profit. Against a background of government support for the expansion of financial markets, many people turned a blind eye to basic issues of business ethics and regulation. We now need to rewrite the rules of finance and global business.

Similarly, we do not have the right rules globally and nationally, nor the institutions and practices, to deliver a well-fed world in 2050. Poor regulation and business

There are equal or worse dangers from dependency upon a few mega firms dominating throughout the food system in which there is an ever increasing economic concentration of power, from seeds to retailing, animal genetics to fast food catering. The rules we create and legal fictions we have invented shape our future and food systems. Our current economics and structures

sustainable but which is neither sustainable nor desirable and others think will lead to collapse: be it economic or physical or a descent into violent conflict over resources or beliefs.

?

http://www.tansey.org/


This version of a sustainable future is based on what I call Techno-dominance: This assumes humans can do anything, have no biological constraints and can deal with any problem they create, including destabilising the biosphere. Ultimately this vision sees humans being liberated from ecological and biological constraints. It embraces extreme genetic engineering, synthetic biology, nanotechnology and the ideas of the transhuman movement, which looks to enhance human beings by genetic engineering and technological augmentation. Eventually, food will be synthesised from any feedstock, for example, by producing proteins in fermentors and then spinning, texturing and flavouring them to appear like meat. This is still science fiction, but some seem to seek it. It envisages a highly technological, highly controlled, broad application, wide adaptation approach with large production units and professionalised supply systems from inputs and seeds to final consumer. This food future is more monocultural, industrial, corporate dominated, and dependent on intellectual property. It is a model developed in the rich countries of Europe and North American but which is being exported globally and is one which also sees little or no future for small holder farmers or semi-subsistence farmers. However, their rapid displacement from farming and migration could cause major social and political upheaval in countries still with large farming populations. There is a variation on this future vision I call Bifurcation and Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at the lid on).This variation on techno-dominance sees a growing split between a rich couple of billion or so wealthy people on the planet, using technologies to live longer and better, with the rest living much poorer lives and subject to control to keep them in their place. They also suffer the consequences of the various disasters likely to occur rather than the rich fraction of humanity.

What I think is a true vision of sustainability, however, recognises that we are animals, albeit human animals, that live in ecological niches and depend upon being in balance with a functioning biosphere and have done so with a staggering amount of diversity. To do so in the future, given the unintended consequences of both our expansion in numbers and use of fossil fuels, requires a new melding of the traditional and indigenous ecosystems alongside smart science and technology that expands that indigenous understanding. It also sees that ecology trumps economics and that we need a very different form of ecological economics and cooperative politics to live successfully on a planet with 9 billion humans on it, faced with massive climate change due to the earlier activities of some of those humans. Here innovation builds upon the fundamental needs for creativity humans have, and which is shown by the survival skills of the poorest around the planet. It builds on the open systems of innovation that underpinned farming and now have been embraced by many in the computer and internet digital world.

This version of sustainability I call Smart ecological. It uses the best of our scientific and technical skills with the diverse social, cultural, indigenous and traditional knowledge and skills developed by human communities in different habitats. This approach sees biodiversity and diversity in general as a strength, and says humans must live within ecological realities and work with them rather then dominate and ignore them. Drawing on this experience and diversity provides the best chance of facilitating adaptation to climate change. It promotes knowledge exchange and sharing as well as

connections between producers and consumers, favours the micro, small and medium enterprise not the transnational, sees a local, regional, global hierarchy, where the local goes first. Yet it also recognises the need for global public-interest-based institutions, such as a reformed UN, to be effective in regulating and holding to account globally active public or private companies. This approach promotes organic, integrated pest management, low external inputs, higher skilled, open systems of exchange, family-farm-based biodiverse farming, healthy diets, and keeping cooking and farming skills alive from farm to flat.

For Europe to embrace the smart ecological approach requires a radical shifting in our research and development (R&D) capacities and in what we support with our aid money. This vision of the future is not being facilitated and encouraged by the way intellectual property (IP) rules are developing and the direction R&D is taking. Ultimately, there is a basic tension between IP and biodiversity that those in favour of global IP standards have failed or refused to discuss. IP owners do best (in terms of profit) if they have a global standard or product (Windows, Viagra, Roundup etc) that is protected globally by high IP standards. Yet innovation in food and agriculture does best if it can draw on a rich biodiversity that depends on fragile variables such as traditional knowledge, local farming systems and free exchange of materials. By building a property rights system that rewards standardization and homogeneity we affect those variables that underpin our systems of biodiversity.

While most of the focus of discussion about the use of modern biotechnology focuses on the technology and what it may do, that is not the only or even main factor that is driving its use in the market. The key to the current corporate-driven use of genetic engineering is not the science or the technology but the law. Specifically, laws on patents, plant variety protection and other forms of so-called

A scientific revolution in biology underpins genetic modification (GM) or genetic engineering (GE) - still the best term as it is classic engineering of a material (DNA), which is not fully understood but which can be manipulated and used to build new structures, not bridges or buildings but plants and animals. But it is changes in the law - initially in the US in the 1980s and globally since then - that drew agrochemical companies, with their patent-based chemical business background, into the messy, long-winded art and science of plant breeding.

The issues at stake are fundamentally about who will have what power and control over the food system in the future. The legal framework, the way business is regulated, is the core battleground where the struggle for the kind of future we will inhabit is being fought. The current GE approach will lead to a future that is more and more corporately controlled, privatised with everything turned into a commodity to be traded, one that is centrally driven and which uses science and technology to dominate and control the environment. Another approach, being pioneered by a very diverse group globally, from peasant and farmers movements to scientists, sees a future that is diverse, that melds traditional and scientific knowledge to develop ecologically-smart easily-shared innovation that is locally and ecologically adapted and works with our environment.

So why do


A patent is a privilege granted by a government, allowing the holder to exclude others from making, using, importing and selling an invention. Patents provide the holder with an effective monopoly on a particular product or production process. These privileges apply in the countries where they are granted for a limited period (the minimum is now 20 years).To prevent some patents from harming the public interest, governments retain the right to over-ride them in certain circumstances

The patent system is meant to provide incentives for the research and innovations which society might need. However, there is heated debate about whether the patent system is the most effective way to achieve this and whether it should be extended to life forms. Many patent-based industries base much of their research on previous public sector innovation, fail to address research needs in areas where there is no market, and even use patents to block new research and competition.

Today, it may be best to think of the IP rules as facilitating a private system of taxation - as firms controlling key patents, copyright, trademarks, can set prices at levels far above costs and use them to segment markets so as to extract as much as possible from each while preventing lower priced products in one area leaking out to places where they may charge many times more in another. It is a system that is now de facto global, as Australian Professor Peter Drahos, a leading researcher on global business regulation and the patent system, has found in doing research for a new book

2009.

the drivers of the bigger economic system within which are many, often complex niches. For economists, key drivers of change are institutions and institutional arrangements. Property rights are at the centre of these, they determine who controls resources, who does and does not have access, and therefore how resources are

Economists push systems to dangerous tipping points, to the edge of sustainability from an ecological point of view, as it is about maximization of resource use. It is this view of efficiency that dominates IP - maximise use of resources. What we need is an ecological view of property rights, less an efficiency view, if we want sustainable

Currently, we seem to have moved internationally in the wrong direction with the ever expanding reach of IP and its movement into agriculture, which has been the quintessential open source system of innovation, grounded in the local environment and sharing and exchanging materials. Instead, the new institutional arrangements promote wide dissemination of broadly adapted varieties controlled by a few firms that feed into industrialised systems of farming. It is not too late to change. Many groups and organisations around the world are showing there are other ways. In other fields, e.g. medicines, software, this model is being challenged, so why go further down it when what is at stake is not just the future control of food, but who will have access to what food, indeed, possibly who will eat?

For effective change in the area of genetic engineering and the food system as a

whole, it is not sufficient to focus on science and technology but the rules that frame and shape its use. Intellectual property is a legal fiction, but unlike literary fiction it shapes what people and firms do. The meaning of the words used in the rules, decisions on what may and may not be patentable, are all the result of the interplay of vested interests seeking the rules that suit them. What we need are legal fictions that support the ecological realities we need to live with not ones that undermine them in an Alice in Wonderland contortion of language.

* The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security, Earthscan, London, 2008, £19.99

Also freely available online in HTML and XML formats http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-

118094-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html. Annex 2 of the book has a list of organisations dealing with these issues.

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-118094-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-118094-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

As I waited for the election results on election night, I received a phone call from a reporter. At one point in the interview, he asked me how long I had waited in line. My

For Black America, there was surely no single greater milestone to be reached than achieving the presidency of the United States. Shirley Chilsom, Jesse Jackson, and many others tried. There were fictional Black presidents, serious and ludicrous, on television and in the movies. A few novels mostly sci-fi of course. In a ridiculous assertion, a prediction of a future Black president by RFK way back when.

But the number of Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Red, (the political) red, (the political) blue and other Americans who actually believed that they would see a Black president in their lifetime was smaller than the number of people who think George W. Bush

OF POST-RACIALITY PROFESSOR CLARENCE LUSANE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON DC

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should be inducted into the Mensa Society. Despite the remarkable and stunning numbers rolling in on election night most notable Obama wins in the former Confederate states of North Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana (it really is) it was not until 11:01:01 pm when the networks felt safe to actually say that Obama had won that it really struck home. It was not the revolution. But it comes as close as any event in our lives, and in the

moment of collective transcendent history as we ever see or be a part of. The country can retreat on the extension of civil and political rights to Blacks as it did after reconstruction and during the Reagan era. Conservative administrations and movements can abandon or outlaw affirmative action as happened in California, Washington, Florida, and unsuccessfully attempted in the 2008 election in Colorado (although, paradoxically, Colorado has the distinction of being the only state in the country and in the history of the nation to have both chambers of the state legislature simultaneously presided over by Black Americans). George W. Bush can let New Orleans, the city that produced the great American and Black-generated music, jazz, drown, but he and they cannot undo the election of Barack Obama. This is the feeling that most Obama supporters, across all the boundaries and dividing lines have embraced.

But, within days of the election, radically different interpretations of the meaning of the election and its significance for American race relations surfaced. Almost immediately conservative and some mainstream pundits began to declare the end of racism in the United States. How could a nation that just elected someone from a segment of the population that in our lifetime had to endure legal segregation be racist any longer? With not only a Black president, but two current Black governors, two past Secretaries of State, two Supreme Court Justices past and present, and the largest minority bloc in the U.S. House of Representatives, surely African American could no longer complain about social exclusion, discrimination, or White bigotry.

Race as a determinant variable in the lives of Black Americans and presumably other racial and ethnic minorities was over. The American people had grown beyond their racial past and were embracing, as Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated, the

was clear and irrefutable the contention went. Racism was no longer an issue because the nation had become colour-blind.

The ideological and political aim of this argument was to marginalize the confrontational politics of the militant wing of the civil rights movement and traditional Black nationalists conveniently ignoring of course their nearly universal support of Obama. It was also aimed at undermining legislative and policy initiatives on the part of the state and the federal government as ameliorative actions to end racial disparities and discrimination. While there is little danger that the majority of Black Americans, who will continue to live in the world of gross racial disparities, police shootings, and Institutional Racism, will buy this assertion, its real targets are policy-makers, the mass media, and those who genuinely or disingenuously want to get past the racial discords that have long defined the nation. The notion of a post-racial world is not only factually wrong but politically hazardous. Reagan-era arguments

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about personal responsibility are already reemerging in the ideological debate.

THE END OF RACISM? In the wake of the election, conservative Black commentator Juan Williams, writing in the Wall Street Journal, is blunt in his take on the significance of the Obama win. He

astounding political victory and the Rice, and

Clarence Thomas as examples of Black achievement, he goes on to contend that the - politics of Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright thrown in

for up-to-date measure will become a on, according to Williams and others, will center on being responsible regarding family obligations, overthrowing gangster cultures, and pragmatic, race-neutral solutions to social problems.

election of one Black person to the White House sweeps away hundreds of years of accumulated social and economic development and institutions distorted by racism. Vast and persistent racial disparities in criminal justice, education, health care, housing, and environmental hazards, to name a few, did not disappear on the night of election.

Despite the fact that Obama will not, in fact, cannot, govern as a issues of race will take on an especially significant tone during his administration.

The second issue is the assumption that all or most of White America voted for Obama and for a new era of racial harmony. The facts tell a different and more complicated story. According to exit polls, Obama won 43 percent of the White vote, a two percent leap over what Kerry won in 2004 and about the same as Clinton won in 1996. In effect, the White vote for Democrats has not budged in many, many years and not been a majority in over 40 years. By all credible analysis, Obama won primarily by building a coalition of Black voters, Latino voters, and young voters (of all colours).

According to Project Vote, which has done a comparative analysis of the 2008 turnout, document a large surge of minority voters, an increase of 21 percent compared to 2004.At the same time, White votes cast drop actually dropped. And the youth vote, 18-29, which overwhelming went to Obama, grew by 9 percent from 2004.

Unlike WilIt should also be underscored that during the campaign, racially-coded language was used to great effect by Clinton and McCain/Palin to tap into the racial prejudices of White voters. statement was a thinly-coated appeal to White working class voters that likely helped with her wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania. For their part, McCain and Palin not only played the anti-black card, but the anti-Muslim one

racially oriented.

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s rallies, overt racist chants were screamed, inflammatory language was allowed, and terrorist accusatory charges were hurled, indeed, encouraged to the point where the Secret Service requested that the campaign tone down the rhetoric because of the spike in death threats toward Obama and his family that happened after these events. While Williams and others may argue that Obama won in spite of these efforts, a more credible view is that he would have won even stronger if the election had stayed focused strictly on the issues.

In a perhaps an even more defining piece regarding this thesis was an extensive New York Times article by Matt Bai, prior to the election, which put forth the proposition

politics altogether. According to Bai, a new generation of Black politicians, from Newark Mayor Cory Booker to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and others, represent a paradigm shift where race is neutralized not as a strategy but as the only effective means of addressing issues facing poor Black communities. Bai constructs two fictional straw dogs an undifferentiated Black protest-driven civil rights mafia and a young, enlightened modernist talented tenth who are in mortal combat for the political soul of Black (and White) America. The titular head of the latter group, symbolically and through voter legitimation, is Obama. Bai, as well as Williams, also assume a gendered bias in erasing Black women from both groups.

It is also important to see Black politics as horizontal rather than vertical. Rather than evoke a hierarchy that locates civil rights above Black nationalism or vice versa, it is more appropriate to see a vertical axis in which civil rights, Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, conservatism, integrationism, and socialism politics compete and complement each other as they vie for acceptance as the path to democracy and justice for African Americans.

In fact, the broad spectrum of politics in the Black community crosses generation, class, gender, age, and arenas of activism. Black support for Obama did not magically happened as a spontaneous rebuke of the civil right leadership, but was a consciously-managed process that involved direct collaboration between the campaign and Black leaders across the board. Obama held regular conference calls, for example, with heads of the civil rights organizations throughout the race, ties that will not vanish now that he has won the election.

to the realm of presidential governance. It is the one political area, obviously, where a person of colour has not been evaluated through the normal critical and analytical race evaluation vehicles. st presidents or one of its worst, his tenure will be nevertheless located, in part, at the nexus where Black politics and American politics meet. Given the confluence of circumstances that he will face going into office and unknown events to come, it certainly will not be uneventful. Inevitably, there will be some disappointments. In a nation as race-policies, politics, and behaviour will be seen through the prism of race by not only Blacks, but other racial groups as well.

Black

OF POST-RACIALITY

America. His triumph is a collective one and highlights the persistence of the long struggle for democracy by a wide range of communities and constituencies. In this light, his win is a benefit for the nation and the world as a whole. For once, at least in this era, nearly the entire world also rejoiced at that moment. In villages, towns, cities, favelas, barrios, prisons, army bases, cafes, and public spaces around the globe, people celebrated. If this was false consciousness, then it was an international manifestation of it.

Obama, of course, could not have won without substantial White support, and indeed made some incredible breakthroughs with White voters. He could not have been victorious in traditional Republican states such as North Carolina and Virginia, for example, with only Black voters. Even in the South, where he was soundly defeated, he won significant votes among young Whites. And as the Institute for Southern Studies reports, about 40 percent or more of the young voters in the region went for Obama including 56 percent in North Carolina.

The post-racialists celebrate the willingness of a growing number of Whites, disproportionately young, to vote for Black candidates but fail to explain why. There are at least three reasons why these developments are happening. First, the civil rights and other Black leaders have been successful in exposing the lingering and persistent nature of racism and racial disparities. Clearly, there are many Whites who become anti-racist because they are open to this information.

Second, the unacceptability of racism in the public sphere -- Trent Lott is across party lines, which madproblematic for John McCain. Despite a hardcore anti-immigrant, Islamophobic wing in the party, most Republicans know that they actually turn off voters when they go in that direction.

Third, in the more immediate sensthrough which we repudiated conservatism and Republican Party politics. Obama, for many, was the vehicle for the solid rejection of more than a decade of the most regressive government in recent memory with Bush in the White House and Republicans in Congress. The hapless campaign of John McCain embodied the deadly combination of contradictions that Bush-era Republicans face: a base split between competing cultural, social and economic constituencies, an economic collapse popularly linked to the failed tenets of neo-liberalism, unnecessary wars of choice whose costs in lives and resources are too high for even many patriotic Republicans, and demographics that are more reflected of a political party in 1908 as opposed to 2008.

dominated American politics for forty or more years. Built expressively on racial fear, class prejudices, imperial global relations, and de-regulated markets, conservative Republicans and opportunistic Democratic administrations in the 1 980s and 1 990s attempted to roll back the advances of the Great Depression and the Great Society. But especially under the George W. Bush administration and a hyper-reactionary Republican Congress (1995-2007), the nation and the world experienced the most aggressive retreat on political and human rights imaginable. All the while, transnational corporations, disproportionately U.S.-based, pillaged the nation and the world with

-RACIALITY

full assistance by the anti-government government of Bush. Obama has called for and he should receive fierce support pushing the progressive-leaning dimensions of his political and policy agenda ending the war in Iraq, building a green capitalist economy, reforming the health care system, etc. and fierce opposition to its more conservative and harmful aspects. There will be both.

Editors note On the 22nd September 2005 Trevor Phillips at that time head of the CRE said: we are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by

race and religion. We are becoming more unequal by ethnicity.....the aftermath of 7/7 forces us to assess where we are. And here is where I think we are: we are sleepwalking our way to segregation. We are becoming strangers to each other, and we are leaving communities to be marooned

and Bradford in 2001 was that people from different groups were not mixing and were leading The report made recommendations on subjects such as local community cohesion

planning, cross-

Since multiculturalism has taken a battering, practically every local authority has a cohesion unit and at the same time attention to

MYTHS AND COUNTERARGUMENTS EXTRACTS FROM A NEW BOOK -

IMMIGRATION BY NISSA FINNEY AND LUDI SIMPSON (POLICY PRESS 2009)

THE EQUANOMICS UK INDEX MAY 2009

race inequality seems to have been subsumed under a conceptualisation where race discrimination = need for cohesion and integration. It may even be argued that this has created the ground for the recent denials of institutional racism. Now however a new book has picked up the theme of myth busting but turned the spotlight on segregation, integration and cohesion (as well as many other elements of race in Britain which we cannot reproduce here). Below we print the summary points concerning integration and segregation and for those wanting more the book can be obtained from Policy Press or any good bookshop. The research carried out by the authors should cause us to regurgitate the diet of myths we have been fed over the last 8 years and instead embrace a more accurate, positive and less problematising view of minorities in Britain.

INTEGRATION

The evidence: More mixed-ethnicity friendships groups

The myth: More segregated friendship groups For most ethnic minority young people, roughly half or more than half of their friends

are White.

Minorities born in Britain are less likely to have exclusively minority friends than those born outside Britain. This is despite there being twice as many minority young adults (in their twenties) as minority old adults (in their fifties), which could lead to an expectation that young minorities have more friends among minorities than their parents.

Less than 20% of minorities born in Britain have friends only from their own group

White people are the most isolated in their friendships more than half have only White friends.

Neighbourhoods with fewest White people are where people have most ethnically diverse friends probably because these neighbourhoods have most ethnic diversity among residents.

Most people of Mixed ethnic groups have parents of different ethnicities. The growth of the Mixed group is therefore an indicator of the most intimate form of inter-ethnic friendship. There are 650,000 people of Mixed ethnic group in England alone, making it the third largest minority after the Indian and Pakistani groups. It is one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups.

Asian Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all marry out of their own groups just as often as White Christians.

When the Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality claimed in 2005 that young people from ethnic minorities were twice as likely

to have a circle of pals exclusively from their own community as were older ethnic false

claim to scientific rigour to create a striking message about friendship groups, unsupported by the evidence, of dangerous inward-looking communities, harbingers of a bleak future for the UK.

MYTHS AND COUNTERARGUMENTS

The evidence: Greater tolerance in social attitudes The myth: A

School ethnic composition is a little more polarised than residential polarisation but the difference is not more than one would expect from social selection by income, and is not growing over time.

Headline claims that schools are becoming more segregated than the areas they sit in are not based on evidence.

School selection is less associated with ethnicity than with income. It may be that the two types of selection are confounded, that is, selection of schools by the better off results in ethnic selection as a by-product because minorities are generally economically disadvantaged in comparison with White people.

School choice does not operate evenly or equally across social groups. Some people are more likely to be allocated the school of their choice than others. Some choices are more restricted, for example by financial means to travel to schools further away or pay for private education.

There is a desire for ethnically mixed schools among White and minority families

but the operation of the system of school choice is preventing this. School segregation, to the extent that it can be shown to exist, is not a result of desire for self-segregation but a result of a mismatch between choice and outcome. This poses a challenge for schools, which must meet their responsibilities to promote good race relations.

SEGREGATION

The evidence: Minorities want to live in mixed neighbourhoods

The myth: Minorities want to live in segregated neighbourhoods Housing aspirations of young people from White and minority ethnic groups are

very similar: they all desire safe neighbourhoods with good environments, no anti-social behaviour and to be near to family and friends.

Minority youngsters look to live in areas that are ethnically mixed and are not in search of ethnic isolation.

Barriers to minorities achieving their preferred housing include racism, lack of affordable housing and housing market structures that may steer people of different ethnicities to live in particular areas.

The evidence: Bradford is ethnically mixed with no sign of ghettos, just like the rest of Britain Britain is sleepwalking to segregation

There are no ghettos in Britain and no change towards ghettos. The case study of Bradford clearly shows that this district, like all others, can by no means be considered to contain a ghetto.

Only 3 of the 30 wards in the district of Bradford have 50% or more of their population from ethnic groups other than White (Bradford Moor, University, Toller)

and each of these has more than 25% White population. These are mixed areas rather than ghettos of single origin.

The number of mixed wards (which are conceptually opposite to ghettos) in Bradford increased from 12 in 1991 to 15 in 2001.

The minority populations in Bradford are growing primarily as a result of more people being born than dying, which is expected from populations with young age structures (such as Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations). In-migration is not the main driver of minority population growth.

There is considerable movement of people from minority ethnic groups out of the minority ethnic areas of Bradford, such as University ward, to elsewhere in the UK. In 2000-01, 1,066 minority ethnic residents left the ward for other parts of the UK, while 622 arrived from elsewhere in the UK: 444 more minority residents left than arrived.

There is a movement of White populations on balance into the diverse areas of Bradford. In 2000-0 1, 185 more White residents moved to University ward from other parts of the UK than left it.

The evidence: Greater ethnic mixing in neighbourhoods across Britain

The myth: Britain is becoming a country of ghettos

British population dynamics are not those of ethnic division and separation. The picture of growth, dispersal and mixing seen in Bradford is common across Britain.

The White population is by far the most isolated ethnic group. The only concentrations which are anything like ghettos are of White people. At the scale of a few streets, the average White person lives in an area that has more than 94% White people in it. Pakistanis in Britain live in street-level areas that on average have 26% Pakistani residents.

There are no very high concentrations of particular ethnic groups, other than White, because the areas with fewest White residents are diverse and becoming more so.

The spread of the population of each minority ethnic group has become more even and less clustered over time. This is true at each geographical scale: local authority districts, electoral wards and street-level census areas. This is indicated by the Index of Dissimilarity, which for the minority ethnic population taken as a whole has decreased from 61.4 in 1991 to 58.8 in 2001.

Academic and government reports (State of the English Cities) agree that

residential ethnic clustering has not increased for any city in Britain.

Only six districts (out of 408) in Britain contain any ward with more than three quarters minority ethnic residents. Even in the least White ward in Britain Southall Broadway in the London Borough of Ealing 12% of the population is White.

Tower Hamlets is the most ethnically mixed district in Britain. All of its wards have at least one quarter White population and one quarter minority ethnic population.

MYTHS AND COUNTERARGUMENTS

Thousands of wards have a majority White population. Eight wards have a majority of a single minority ethnic group. These wards are in Leicester, Bradford, Pendle, Ealing and Tower Hamlets.

The highest proportion for a single minority group is 74%, the proportion of Indians in the population of the Latimer ward of Leicester. This is far from a ghetto, and cannot be compared with Chicago, where over half the Black population live in neighbourhoods that are more than 90% Black.

The evidence: Ethnic clustering can and does result from positive causes and has positive consequences The myth: Residential segregation is a cause and consequence of social breakdown Clustering be it along the lines of ethnicity or class or occupation or any other

social indicator can be a matter of choice as a result of positive affiliations. Negative causes or consequences of clustering cannot be assumed. A distinction should be

inequalities and discrimination.

Ethnic inequalities are not caused by areas with high proportions of minorities. For example, minority unemployment is double that of White unemployment in areas with mainly White population as well as in areas with less than 50% White population. Social inequality is evident irrespective of ethnic composition, and this inequality should be the focus of concerns.

The myth: Segregation breeds terrorism

Muslims are not more likely to be charged with terrorism if they live in areas of Muslim concentration rather than in any other area of Britain.

A Muslim from Bradford is no more likely to be a terrorist than a Muslim from Bexley. There is no reason to link particular levels of Muslim concentration with terrorism.

POPULATION CHANGE

The evidence: Larger minority neighbourhoods result from natural growth (less from immigration and not at all from retreat) The myth: Growth of minority clusters is caused by retreat Residential clustering is the result of neither White flight nor minority retreat,

but much more benign demographic change, mostly non-racial in character.

Natural change (births minus deaths) adds more to Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations in Britain than does immigration.

Population growth in areas with large minority ethnic populations is predominantly a result of natural change, that is, more people being born than dying.

In the districts with highest minority ethnic population, births add more to the minority population than does immigration or migration from elsewhere in the UK. For example, for minorities during one year:

I

In B

Family-building is an expected demographic process for population groups that have a young age structure, than for the White population.

The evidence:

Shared migration experiences which result in more mixed neighbourhoods The myth: White flight and minority retreat

There is movement out of minority clusters by each minority ethnic group and the White group at similar rates. Dispersal of this kind is evident for each minority ethnic group, for the 1 990s and the 2000s, and for districts, wards and street-level neighbourhoods.

Indians are leaving Leicester, Caribbeans are leaving Lambeth, Bangladeshis are leaving Tower Hamlets and Pakistanis are leaving Bradford.

Minorities are moving away from their concentrations and into areas where they are least concentrated:

The highest Indian concentrations annually lost 0.4% of their Indian population to other parts of the UK.

The highest Black concentrations annually lost 1.6% of their Black population to other parts of the UK.

The highest Pakistani/Bangladeshi concentrations annually lost 0.3% of their Pakistani/Bangladeshi population to other parts of the UK.

The highest White concentrations gained the equivalent of 0.2% of their existing White population. The areas with fewest White residents lost 0.5% of their White population.

There is White movement into minority concentrations in Leicester, Bradford, Lambeth, Wolverhampton, Wycombe, Manchester and Merton.

In 23 of the 35 minority concentrations in Britain more minorities than the White group moved out to elsewhere in the UK.

These patterns have non-racial explanations. They represent aspirational movements reflecting the well-established trends of movement from cities to suburban and more rural areas (counter-urbanisation).

Immigration replaces the White population, rather than displaces it. Significant migration out of Leicester began before significant immigration to it

Comments

evidence. White and minority groups are moving in the same direction and at the same rate.

The evidence: diverse, and so what?

The myth: Imminent threat of Minority White Cities

concept that has substantive meaning or significance. There is no reason to focus on 50%, on whiteness or on cities as markers of critical change in ethnic diversity

that is more governable than a diverse one. The concept is racist.

claims made by the media and the (former) Commission for Racial Equality.

integration.

At sub-city scales there are already areas where White people make up less than half the population, and these are predominantly diverse areas where no one ethnic group dominates.

Our thanks to Ludi Simpson and Nissa Finney for permission to print this summary extract.

Documents

Equanomics Index Jan 2010