According to the report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, racial inequality is deeply rooted in the British society. Black people and other ethnic minorities continue to face discrimination, including such areas as education and health care. Black graduates are earning on average 23.1% less incomes than their white counterparts, which is aggravated by the fact that numerous members of ethnic minorities do not have a job at all. According to the commission chairman David Isaac, the report reflects the extremely worrying combination of growth in the number of hate crimes after the Brexit coupled with years of systematic social injustice and racial inequality.
The commission report draws public attention to the following facts:
-
Black people in Britain are three times more inclined of being murdered than whites;
-
Unemployment rates are considerably higher among ethnic minorities;
-
Black workers with degrees are paid 23.1% less on average than White workers with degrees;
-
Representatives of ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty than whites;
-
Ethnic minorities are still poorly represented in the government structures, such as courts and police units.
Racially segregated schools is a common occurrence in the UK, since parents like to send children to schools where their ethnicity is dominant, but this hampers educational attainment.
The Sunday Times would point out that schools in some parts of England are more racially divided than St Louis in the US – a hotbed of racial tension in the wake of police killing last year of Michael Brown, a black teenager.
The social movement known as the “Black lives matter” is now “occupying” the UK and it even plans to reach continental Europe. Its protesters have already obstructed traffic en route to Heathrow airport last August, on top of blocking the city center in Nottingham and the Birmingham Highway. A month earlier – on July 10 – a crowd of about three thousand people cut off Oxford Street in central London. Black protestants were chanting “Black lives matter!” and “No peace, no justice!” On the the same day, young representatives of ethnic minorities occupied Brixton’s center, blocking traffic until midnight.
The true scale and true nature of the overt racial hatred that swept Britain after the Brexit vote was uncovered by The Independent when it was allowed exclusive access to a database of accounts collected by the social media sites PostRefRacism, Worrying Signs and iStreetWatch, with more than 500 racist incidents being uncovered that occurred in the weeks after the EU referendum. A video with such an incident was aired by Channel 4, showing an Asian man being assaulted by hooligans in the midst of a crowd in Manchester.
But ethnic minorities are not the only ones to be afraid for their lives in the UK today. The same hatred is being displayed by the Brits towards emigrants from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. According to official data, Britain has become a cruel home to at least 100 thousand Latvians and not less than 180 thousand Lithuanians, as well as up to a million Poles.
As it’s been reported previously by the Latvian television channel LNT, ethnic Latvians that are residing in the UK complain about the attacks they suffer in the streets, on public transport, cafes and restaurants, at work and in educational institutions. The victims of the attacks are usually being urged to leave the Kingdom immediately, and they’ve been victimized to the point when they would create their own community on Facebook. At the same time The Daily Mail reports a rapidly growing number of hate crimes being committed against the Poles.
It should be noted that manifestations of racism, xenophobia and discrimination are being encourage by British politicians, since there’s a large number of right-wing activists among elected officials in the UK today. A few days before the Brexit vote there was a scandal with the UKIP party using banners with a picture of a long line of refugees and the words: “Breaking Point”.
For sure, London has not signed the 12th protocol of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which provides equal rights to all inhabitants of all European countries, regardless of their place of birth or income. Therefore, banners reading “No to Eastern Europeans!” do remind other racist slogans, such as “No Jews or Blacks Allowed!”
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
