Between the constraints of collapsing lockdown and the exhilaration of anti- racist protest, which would you choose?

BLM.  Woe betide you if you need the acronym explained. The tide of Black Lives Matter protest has swept across the Atlantic and across the world, following in the wake of Covid 19.  Point out the risk of mass infection caused by close encounter at demonstrations and you risk being called a closet racist by some.  Politicians are gambling that there won’t be a second spike despite clear warnings from the north of England. For so many young people champing at the bit against  lockdown, health warnings are uncool, bor-ing.  I shouted at Andrew Marr on BBC1 this morning for failing to make a connection between the two until the last interview with health secretary Matt Hancock

Self proclaimed northern lass from Wigan the ethnically mixed Lisa Nandy now Labour’s shadow foreign secretary was unqualified in supporting the protests.“You cannot be silent in the face of racism and police brutality, and I think those young people are right to raise their voices and to demand change.

 

• In 2018-19, black people were more than nine times as likely to be stopped and searchedby police as white people.
• They were over three times as likely to be arrestedas white people.
• They were more than five times as likely to have force used against themby police as white people.
• A quarter of the prison populationcomes from BAME backgrounds, despite representing just 14% of the population.

Nandy never said a word about the health risks. In the Observer, reporter Tim Adams tackled them head-on. The protestors had made a real choice.

 It was always likely that the months of lockdown would demand some kind of emotional catharsis. You imagined it would involve the usual British excesses of lager and sunshine. In fact, in the past week its primary expression has been a coming together of mostly young people in our cities under the banner of Black Lives Matter…

In the midst of that crowd – an unnatural human feeling in itself for all those who have been in isolation – it was impossible not to feel that those warnings should have been heeded far more closely. But for the vast majority of those that came, the risk had seemed worth it. Some of the banners in Parliament Square made their argument succinctly: “Racism has always been a pandemic.”

As well as looking like the premature end of a shutdown spring in the capital, the protest also felt very much like the beginning of something; not a one-off outpouring of rage against the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis 12 days ago, but a sustainable expression of the need for change.

The summer looks likely to pitch those demands for social justice squarely against public health.

The immediate target in the US is obvious – police violence. But in Britain?

Former home secretary and the chancellor Sajid Javid warned  Boris Johnson to implement race reforms he left in the pipeline.

Britain is not the United States. The City has come a long way since I was looking for my way in, and our police have proved themselves more effective than most at changing in response to injustice.. That said, there is greater disproportionality in the number of black people in prisons here than in the United States, and while the abuse hurled at our officers is unacceptable, in some ways our police service still has a way to go – as do we all.

My brother has served as a police officer for the past 27 years. One of my proudest moments as Home Secretary was speaking at his graduation from our country’s most senior command course. It wasn’t difficult to pick him out from behind the podium – aside from our matching haircuts, us Javid brothers were the only ethnic minorities in the room.

That progress hasn’t come about by accident, neither is it any cause for complacency. Ethnic minorities in Britain are still the victims of racial injustice and substantial disparities in opportunity, as the think-tank British Future has demonstrated. The government can and must do more to address racial inequalities in our society.

For starters, the Home Office has yet to implement the process of root and branch cultural change necessary in the aftermath of Windrush. Like the Macpherson Report, the lessons-learned review that I ordered during my time as Home Secretary set out a clear plan of action for the government to implement. Published under my successor, it must be properly implemented to demonstrate that when we say ‘never again’, we mean it. I have every faith that Priti Patel will do so.

This week’s review showed that black and minority ethnic groups are up to twice as likely to lose their lives to COVID-19 as their white counterparts. It was a stark reminder that while we may be in the pandemic together, we do not share its risks equally. Tragically, two-thirds of the NHS and care staff who have lost their lives to the virus have been from minority backgrounds. It is imperative we discover why, so the government can do more to protect them.

The Race Disparity Audit initiated by Theresa May has a crucial role to play, and it’s important that it continues its work. Yet there is little point shining a light on racial injustices if that does not turn into action to address them.

Historian David Olusoga presenter of the BBC series Black and British, a forgotten history.

Excusing or downplaying British racism with comparisons to the US is a bad habit with a long history. It began in 1807, with the abolition of the slave trade and picked up steam three decades later with the end of British slavery, twin events that marked the beginning of 200 years of moral posturing and historical amnesia. The Victorian readers who rightly wept over Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, conveniently forgot which nation had carried his ancestors into slavery and didn’t dwell on the fact that most of the cotton produced by American slaves like him was shipped to Liverpool.  

Late I9th century statue of Edward Colston, Bristol city benefactor and 17th century slaver, thrown into the river this afternoon. Colston’s legacy has been controversial for years. Although the  vandalism has been condemned, it means that whatever its ultimate fate,  his statue and his reputation cannot be restored to its pedestal.

Learned activists like Olusoga are revising the traditional verdicts of history. He insists there is a direct link between the abuses of slavery over three hundred years ago and today’s persistent inequality.   However uncomfortable the thought, elevating the abuses of the past above its achievements  may give a momentary boost to  the cause of social equality today.  But the task in the longer term is less amenable to solutions however dramatic like throwing a statue into the river. It requires a more integrated approach and a determination not to  be prisoners of our history.  There are parallels here with how history is now viewed  in Ireland.

Today there is also something more insidious than history  ; stereotyping which cuts both ways;   an  argument  made by Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times

The death of George Floyd was shocking, but high-profile instances of brutality can obscure more elusive factors that shape racial divisions. Consider studies that show that employers in the United States are 50% more likely to reject candidates with black-sounding names — even when they have otherwise identical CVs. Consider, too, a UK report for the Department for Work and Pensions that found “high levels of name-based discrimination in favour of white applicants”

The culprit is stereotyping, the tendency, particularly under pressure of time, to make snap judgments about individuals based on group categorisation. 

 I was saddened to see a protester cheered to the rafters when he said: “Every white officer is part of the disease.” This is classic stereotyping, treating all officers as if they are interchangeable with Floyd’s murderer…

Some campaigners have taken this narrative further, arguing that white people are “inherently” racist by virtue of being white. White culture “institutionalises subjugation” and white norms of speech (whatever that means) “underlie racialised institutions”, as Professor Ian Haney López has put it. It is true that black people have been discriminated against for centuries, but doesn’t the tarnishing of everything “white” run the risk of bolstering division?

. By setting up a “them” v “us” dichotomy, this reverse stereotyping is exacerbating the very problem that we need to solve — something that Donald Trump is only too willing to inflame and exploit.

And another case of stereotyping.  The wretched Trump is a Republican; but that doesn’t make  the Democrats  good guys, writes Gerard Baker in the Times. If only it were so simple .

 George Floyd. Eric Garner. Freddie Gray. Rodney King. The baleful list of the names of black men killed or brutalised by police in America is long and too familiar. So too the list of cities where these and other acts occurred, cities now engulfed in protest and mayhem: Minneapolis. New York. Baltimore. Los Angeles.

These places have something else in common. Every one of them is controlled by the Democratic Party. Not just recently, or narrowly, or tenuously. Like almost all big cities in America where most instances of racial tension have occurred of late, they are citadels of one-party rule…

he picture painted in the past week of a daily reality for black men in which they cannot walk out their front door without fear of being murdered by a white police officer is grotesque.

According to the latest data from the justice department, blacks accounted for about a quarter of all those killed by police in the past three years; whites were slightly more than half. Blacks of course represent a smaller proportion of the US population — about 13 per cent, so those black fatalities do indeed represent a significantly disproportionate number of deaths by law enforcement.

But this is misleading. The relevant statistic when considering what happens to people at the hands of the police is not total population but the numbers of people who come into contact with police. In short, a better measure is the relationship between those who commit recorded violent crimes and those who are killed by police. According to the FBI, almost 39 per cent of murders and 54 per cent of robberies in the US are committed by African-Americans.

For all the simplistic narrative that portrays every encounter between a black man and a white police officer as a clash between good and evil, the reality of urban policing is much more complex. The principal function in practice of police forces in these cities is, sadly, to try to stop black people from killing each other. In 2018, for every black person killed by a white in America, there were 11 blacks killed by a black person.

It is not racist to point this out. It may well indeed primarily reflect the vast inequalities that entrap African-Americans: of income and wealth, education and opportunity, and of the prejudice that supports it.

On an encouraging footnote …

No new coronavirus deaths have been reported in Northern Ireland.

Total deaths of those who tested positive for the virus in the country stands at 537, according to the Department of Health.

There have been another six confirmed cases of Covid-19, bringing the total recorded since the outbreak began to 4,796.