New research involving an Indian-origin academic has found that racism is an “enduring feature” of British society, with more than a third of people from ethnic and religious minority groups in the country having experienced some form of racist assault.
Dr Dharmi Kapadia, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and one of the co-authors of the collaborative project called for a rethink of policies and procedures that enable racist discrimination.
Kapadia along with authors from King’s College London and the University of St. Andrews worked on a major new survey of racism and ethnic inequalities entitled Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS), carried out by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE).
“Our data is stark evidence that racism is an enduring feature of British society today,” said Kapadia. “However, tackling racism is not just a case of merely removing ‘bad apples’ from workplaces and institutions such as the Metropolitan Police – we need to seriously transform the policies and procedures that enable racist discrimination to persist, in order to ensure better outcomes and life chances for ethnic and religious minority people,” she said.
The racism reported by the survey’s respondents took different forms – physical, verbal or damage to property – and happened in all areas of life including education, work and when looking for housing.
Overall, almost one in six respondents had experienced a racially motivated physical assault, and over a third of people identifying as Gypsy/Traveller, Roma or Other Black reported that they had been physically assaulted because of their ethnicity, race, colour, or religion.
