Our public bodies are institutionally racist: against white people

Yahoo

31-03-2025

Cultivating solidarity in a multi-ethnic democracy is not easy. In fact, as much of history can attest, it is a very hard thing to achieve.
And it becomes especially difficult when state-funded institutions demonise the largest ethnic group in the country.
This is exactly what the London Museum has done: the publicly funded body has urged its staff to address the problem of 'whiteness' as part of a so-called diversity initiative.
This is because 'whiteness' is supposedly 'embedded' in the workplaces up and down the country and it needs to be rooted out. In the Orwellian world in which so many institutions now operate, where words mean the opposite of how we commonly understand them, challenging 'whiteness' is an example of 'inclusion'.
In fact it is about the most divisive thing that can be done: it makes the task of fostering a more cohesive society doomed to fail. Contrary to what the woke activists claim, white British people are amongst the most tolerant indigenous populations on Earth, not the bastions of racism they are made out to be.
Yet time after time, our public institutions peddle a fundamentally warped interpretation of British history and heritage in which to be white is to be tainted with all kinds of sins, from colonialism to white supremacy.
Britain had made magnificent strides in terms of race relations before the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. But the poison of modern identity politics risks undermining all of this.
Much of the 'anti-racist' activity in modern Britain is inspired by the 'radical progressivism' that has taken root across the pond in the United States.
We are told that the prejudices and biases of the white-British population are to be unlearned and corrected. But ethnic minorities, by contrast, are deserving of nothing less than infinite compassion and understanding. This is patronising towards black and Asian people; it also makes a mockery of the principles of personal responsibility and fairness.
The woke capture of public bodies risks fuelling a white backlash against the establishment. Equality under the law and colour-blindness are being denigrated by those who claim to advocate for 'anti-racism'.
Take, for example, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales – which has recommended that a pre-sentencing report (PSR) should normally be considered necessary if an offender belongs to certain groups. These include being 'from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community'.
This carries a variety of risks – including the possibility that religious beliefs and cultural norms will be used as a defence by ethnic-minority offenders in the hope of securing more lenient sentences.
Our public institutions should foster belonging. While the likes of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRU) have rowed back on their plans to 'improve' diversity and inclusion for its regulated firms, the guidance on 'whiteness' provided by the London Museum to its employees shows that 'wokeness', in the shape of racial identity politics, is anything but dead.
And our money is paying for this: just let that sink in. The effort of the last half-century at building a successful multicultural and multiethnic nation is being vigorously undermined. This should gravely concern all of us.
Dr Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance.
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