Is racism still a blind spot for contemporary political institutions and parties? - PO-131- Thomas Cour-Palais
In exploring whether racism is still a blind-spot I will focus on political institutions
and parties in the UK, in particular on governmental attitudes but will also touch on
the role or views of some other powerful bodies, such as parliament, the judiciary,
opposition MPs, and advisory bodies.
The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities chaired by Tony
Sewell was released March 2021, having been commissioned by Boris Johnson’s
government in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. These protests followed: the
murder in the US of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer, and the
disproportionate deaths and economic suffering amongst minority ethnic groups
during the Covid pandemic. The Windrush scandal and Grenfell Tower deaths also had
a significant impact, alongside ongoing lived experience of racism in the UK, and the
legacy of Britain’s colonialist, imperialist, slave-trading history. Response to the
‘Sewell Report’ clearly demonstrates a massive government blind-spot regarding
racism, with United Nations experts reporting that ‘stunningly, the report’… ‘claims
that, whilst there may be overt acts of racism in the UK, there is no institutional racism’. 1
Because the Sewell Report stated that, whilst individual acts of racism happen, UK
institutional and structural racism no longer exist, the government chose to absolve
1 ‘UN Experts Condemn UK Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report’, OHCHR (2021), <https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/04/un-experts-condemn-uk-commission-race-and-ethnic-disparities- report>.
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