Race in Britain 2012: Has life changed for ethnic minorities?

[Alpha Blondy]

Some things have improved for the black and Asian communities since the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, but Britain still has a long way to go before it can call itself a colour-blind country.

 

Last week, as Gary Dobson and David Norris's 19-year escape from justice finally came to an end, the distraught parents of another young ethnic minority man visited the scene of their son's death.

 

Anuj Bidve, a 23-year-old Lancaster University student who was shot dead on Boxing Day, was killed for the apparent crime of not being white.

 

Nearly two decades after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, has anything changed? And what is life really like for young black and ethnic minority people in Britain today?

 

In the high-visibility worlds of the establishment, entertainment and sport, there are signs of progress: there are more than four times as many black and ethnic minority MPs in Parliament as there were in 1993. A Muslim woman takes her seat at the cabinet table every Tuesday. An African-born man is in charge of a FTSE 100 company. Black and Asian actors regularly take leading roles in prime-time TV series.

 

The population has changed since 1993: then ethnic minorities accounted for 5.1 per cent in England and Wales; the latest figure is 8.7 per cent.

 

Some would argue that the major dividing line in Britain today is not race but class, and that Stephen's killing captured the nation's interest only because he was from a "nice" middle-class family and had aspirations to be an architect.

 

But the statistics for ethnic minorities are bleak: black men are 26 times more likely than their white counterparts to be stopped and searched by police, while black men and women in their early twenties are twice as likely to be not in employment, education or training as white people. And black and Asian defendants are still more likely to go to jail than their white counterparts when convicted of similar crimes – and they serve longer sentences. A Ministry of Justice (MoJ) analysis of tens of thousands of cases found that in 2010, 23 per cent of white defendants were sent to prison for indictable offences, compared with 27 per cent of black counterparts and 29 per cent of Asian defendants.

 

The report, Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System, also found that ethnic minority defendants received longer sentences in almost every offence group. For sexual offences, white defendants received an average of just over four years in jail, but black defendants were sent down for more than five years. For violence against the person, the average breakdown was 16.8 months for whites, 20 months for blacks and almost two years for Asian defendants. The MoJ insisted that "the identification of differences should not be equated with discrimination", claiming that the disparities between ethnic groups could be explained by the seriousness of the offences, the presence of mitigating or aggravating factors and whether or not a defendant pleaded guilty.

 

Yet Lee Jasper, chairman of the London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium, said: "Nothing can so starkly illustrate the industrial scale of racism in the judicial process than these figures."

 

Last summer's riots paradoxically suggested something in society has changed for the better. The ingredients for widespread inter-racial violence were there, but it never materialised. However, Gurbux Singh, who was chair of the Commission for Racial Equality when Oldham and Bradford were torn by race riots in 2001, warned yesterday: "With the recession taking hold, when you have disaffected young people who feel they are right at the bottom competing with another community, I am fearful that the tensions can easily arise again."

 

In March 1993, a month before Stephen's murder, Stoke City player Mark Stein was called a "short, ugly, black, bean-headed twat" by an opponent on the football pitch. On Friday, Tom Adeyemi, the 20-year-old Oldham defender, was left in tears after alleged racist abuse was hurled at him from Liverpool's Kop. A 20 year-old man from Aintree was arrested last night in relation to the incident.

 

Last Tuesday, despite a plea from Stephen's mother Doreen not to rejoice, there appeared to be collective back-patting when Norris and Dobson were found guilty, as if the verdicts had cleansed Britain of racism.

 

Yet reminders of racial hatred were never far away. Yesterday, Subhash and Yogini Bidve, having flown to Salford to visit the scene of his kiling, were back in Pune for his cremation. Mourners watched a flower-filled open coffin carried through the streets.

 

There is nothing that can comfort them in their loss. But perhaps the prominent coverage of Anuj's death, and the impact the Lawrence trial has had, show that one thing has changed for the better since 1993, and that is ultimately because of one young man from Eltham: our public horror at racism has increased.

 

Case studies...

 

Meet two friends who live in Eltham, south London, where Stephen Lawrence died. They share the same hopes. But the national figures suggest the prospects for any black person are much less favourable than for someone who is white...

 

Mimi Olaide, 19, lives in Eltham with his sister, Christana, 22, mother, a mental health nurse, and father, who can't work for health reasons. They rent from a housing association. They moved there in 2010. Mimi is in his second year studying sports science and PE at St Mary's University College in Twickenham.

 

"I want to be a PE teacher. Whatever grade I get in the third year will determine what I do. I want to go on and do a PGCE [Postgraduate Certificate in Education] or GTP [Graduate Teaching Programme] and you need a minimum of a 2.1. Have I been affected by racism? Not me directly, I don't think so. There's maybe just local gang rivalry, but that's non-racial. Eltham used to be really racist. Obviously I was at uni last week, people were asking how Eltham is, because they know Stephen Lawrence was killed there. There are lots of multicultural people around now, compared to how Eltham used to be. It's not as racist now as people say it was then."

 

Luke Kimberley, 21, has always lived in Eltham. He lives with his mother, who works in student finance at South Bank University, father, a taxi driver, and sister Elle, 18. He is in his third year studying PE at St Mary's University College in Twickenham

 

"I want to be a PE teacher. If I want to go into that I'll have to do a PGCE. That's really my main ambition at the moment. Buying a house, that's my main goal, a normal lifestyle really, nothing extravagant. Mum and Dad own a house and I'd like to follow in their footsteps. Mimi plays in the same football team as me at uni. We don't meet up when we come back here, only at uni. Racism is quite a talking point at the moment. I have a range of friends from different ethnic backgrounds. As far as I know they haven't experienced any racism. Probably there is racism in Eltham, but not as much as everyone makes out there is. Obviously the attack on Stephen Lawrence was a racist one, but I don't think Eltham in itself is racist."

 

 

 

 

 

continue here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/race-in-britain-2012-has-life-changed-for-ethnic-minorities-6286786.html

 

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very interesting article.

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the britain i grew up in is so different from what exists now. multiculturalism and diversity, buzz-words of new labour hyperbole cease to exist. i'm not sure if'll ever go back 'home' bcos i feel right at home here in my native birthplace. cheers.