 Hi everyone, I'm Kuba Shan Baptiste, Society and Arts Editor at The Conversation. Thank you for joining us for this conversation webinar on racial inequalities and COVID-19 and what should be done to address the long-term impacts organised in collaboration with the International Public Policy Observatory, or the IPPO for short. Almost as quickly as COVID-19 spread, the pandemic illuminated a number of existing social issues, especially in terms of racial inequalities. Hate crimes against people of colour and East and South East Asian people in particular soared. Black and brown health workers began to die at disproportionate rates, with many of them too scared to speak up about the conditions they faced, and they were forced to work under. We had Black Lives Matter protests all over the UK, not just against US police brutality, but institutional racism in the UK too. As experts scrambled for answers for these widening inequalities, some possible explanations were offered, vaccine hesitancy, vitamin D deficiency, and when the long-awaited port from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities came out in March, pessimistic narratives about race due to a rise in identity politics. But is there more to it than that? And if so, how can we better understand the truth about racial inequalities and COVID-19, and what should be done to address the long-term impacts? The IPPO is a collaboration between the conversation and universities around the world, and this is the second in a series of webinars that will bring together even more academics, policymakers, and wider thinkers together to discuss how best to tackle the ongoing effects of the pandemic on various areas, with a focus on those who have most been affected by COVID-19. For the second webinar in this series, I'm joined by Claudia Bernard, Professor of Social Work at Goldsmiths and member of the Black Female Professors Forum, which is conducting research into the impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people in the UK. I'm also joined by Winston Morgan, Reader in Toxicology and Clinical Biochemistry and Director of Impact and Innovation at the University of East London, who has written for the conversation about why racism needs to be seen as a bigger factor in dealing with vaccine hesitancy. I'm also joined by James Nazru, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He's also co-author of a State of the Nation report on ethnicity, race and inequality in the UK, and he's also co-lead of the largest ever survey of ethnic and religious minority people, Evans, which is focusing on their experiences of the pandemic and its consequences. And lastly, I'm joined by Mariko Hayashi, who is Director of the London-based Community Organization at the Southeast and East Asian Centre. She's also independent researcher on migration and human rights in the UK, as well as East and Southeast Asia. Now, if you have any questions for our guests, leave them in the comment stream, and we'll do our best to address them at the end. But for now, welcome to all our panelists, and thank you so much for joining us today. Now, to start off with, I'm going to ask a question to all of you, and I'll come to you each individually, but there are a lot of conflicting ideas around the racial disparities that have widened since the pandemic. What would you say are the biggest threats to eradicating these problems? Let's start with you, Winston. Oh, hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Well, I'd say structural racism drives racial inequalities. As someone who's worked hard to highlight racial inequalities in education, I've been doing that for a long time, public health and medicine over the last 20 years. I recognise that various impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pandemic, as they're different. If you think of the virus, it provides a scientific medical and public health challenge, whereas the pandemic is a wider societal challenge. I started writing about these issues because I could see that ignorance and denial about race and structural racism was leading to confusing messages by scientists and governments. And this was directly contributing to the disproportionate deaths of Black people, and people described generalist Black Haitian and minority ethnic. The threat will be a failure to understand what race is and what race is not. So if we don't understand what race is and what race is, and if we continue to deny what is structural racism, then we'll never solve these problems. That's a really interesting observation to start with. Mariko, what are your thoughts on what the biggest threats to eradicating these issues around racial disparities are? Thank you, Kuban. Thank you, everyone, for having me. And I'm a bit like today. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the professors who are experts in the subject of the discussion today. I just a little bit on backgrounds I just want to go through that. As introduced, I work for Southeast Asian Center, which is a grassroots community organization working not only but mainly with the migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum from East and Southeast Asia. And I myself also a migrant in the UK. I came here as a young adult to first study from my hometown in rural Japan about 14 years ago. And then since then I've been going back and forth between here and Japan and other Asian countries. And so I've been here about eight and a half years in the UK. So I just wanted to say that I met my knowledge and experience in the UK might be a bit limited, but I'm hoping to contribute to the discussion today with the experiences of my own and the people I work with. So I just want to set the scene as well at the beginning of the discussion because I guess here I'm representing my communities and East and Southeast Asian communities that let me just define who we really are talking about when we say East and Southeast Asian people or ECESEA people. So three people, obviously those people have East and Southeast Asian heritage in East Asia, including my home country, Japan or Korea, China, Cambodia, Taiwan and Southeast Asia are all usually described as 10 countries that consist ASEAN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Timor-Leste. So the ASEAN member states are, you know, they include Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia and Myanmar. So for me it's important to highlight these diverse regions with different, very different cultures and histories and experiences of ECESEA people in the UK are also diverse. I just don't want to hegemonize this diversity here as well. But at the same time, COVID-19 has raised awareness of ECESEA communities in the UK, although it wasn't the best way that we hoped for. However, whenever we still talk about our experiences, we still have to begin with who we are because we are a very invisible community. And why is it so? One of the challenges that our communities face when talking about racism or racial disparities is lack of data. And we know that data, especially statistical data, you know, is often required as evidence, you know, and important when shaping the policies. But in this country, when, you know, we are not really in the official statistics, unfortunately. In the UK, you know, it's a legacy of colonial history. The term Asian is often associated with people of heritage from places which were part of British colonial India of South Asia. So if you look at the ethnic categories that used by the government, including the sense that we just took part in, the choices of ethnic categories available for Asian people are Indian, Pakistani, Bangladesh, Chinese, and Asian others. So the Asia, you know, Asia is the largest continent and home to 60% of the world population. And it consists of places with places such as Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and some parts of the Pacific Islands. So within this Asian other category, you'll find people with heritage of all these different regions, except people who identify themselves with the four specific categories that I mentioned. So using other statistics, such as nationalities or places of birth, will miss out the British people who were born here, or, you know, people who have settled here and naturalized. So what I wanted to say here is that whenever we discuss issues such as racism and discrimination, for us, it is almost impossible to see the clear picture, or at least clear statistics to measure the problem. And even the hate crime against easy people that Guoba mentioned earlier, you know, which have definitely spiked in the wake of pandemic, but at the same time, it's difficult to see the real picture of the issues. And different regional police have their own way of recording this. Some are recording people only who identify as Chinese, or others may have their own definition of East and South Asian people. It may be shocking to note that the Metropolitan Police use times Oriental to identify and categorize anyone who's assumed to be East or South Asian heritage. So the invisibility is also clear in the severe lack of representation of easy people in position of power or decision making. And one of the reports submitted to the call for evidence on racial disparities argue that easy people only fail 0.27% of the most powerful positions in the UK. So these lack of data and their representations are systematic ignorance or neglect. And that's very much of the problems which continuously make it difficult for our communities to address issues and challenge racial disparities. So that's a really important insight there, especially in terms of the lack of research in those areas. It might be something that anyone could be able to speak to at some point. James, I'll just come to you. What would you say is sort of the biggest threat so eradicating these issues since the pandemic? So what I'm going to say is going to echo what Parico and Winston have already said, and I'll say it reasonably briefly. Basically, I think there are three key issues. One is recognition of the inequalities and their extent and adequate monitoring. One of which is perhaps not strong enough a word, adequate accounting of these inequalities and their impacts. And Mariko has spoken to the shortage of data. There is a severe shortage of data on the extent of these inequalities, which then allows them to be ignored, to be hidden, to be brushed under the carpet. So that's one issue. Another issue is understanding the role of racism, as Winston has said. The role of racism in this and how racism generates the inequalities that we have. And of course, we've seen very strong narratives that have attempted to find explanation in the nature of ethnicity or the nature of race without actually really considering the importance and significance of racism in shaping people's lives and inequalities they face. And then the third issue, I think, is that to tackle these inequalities, we need then to address racism. And that requires really fundamental shifts in the ways in which our institutions and broader state processes operate. And to ask for those fundamental shifts is the answer we should have, but it's a very difficult thing to achieve. And so it's those three things, I think. Lack of recognition of the inequalities or lack of adequate recognition, a lack of understanding of how racism shapes people's lives in the policy world. So the policy arena does not understand this. And then the need to tackle these inequalities by shifting the ways in which our institutions and state operate. Thank you, James. We'll hear a lot more about that, I'm sure, throughout this conversation. Claudia, lastly, what are your thoughts on why, what are the biggest threats are to eradicating racial disparities? I think briefly, and sort of building on what's already been said, I would say, as James has said, the lack of recognition. But I will also add, there is also a resistance and a denial that structural inequalities and in particular structural racism exist. And that is one of the biggest barriers to really addressing the issues. And what the pandemic has done is really just expose and amplify existing structural inequalities, and in particular, pre-existing racial biases within our society. And it's sort of laid that bear in a way. And that's what we now are faced with really addressing. But I think it's the sort of lack of recognition, but also a denial and also a resistance to any change. Yeah, no, definitely. We've seen quite egregious examples of that, which we'll get into shortly. But now, I just want to come back to James specifically. You contributed to a rapid review on COVID-19 related inequalities in London that was published late last year. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and whether your understanding of what drives these issues have changed at all since then? Have you learnt anything new? I don't know anything to do with that kind of interesting question. I can't say no to that, can I? But what I can say is that the issues continue to repeat themselves, continue to echo. So the report that we did for the Greater London Authority was on more than ethnicity. It was looking at inequalities across the spectrum in relation to the impact of COVID. And it was more than a focus on health. It was also focused on the other consequences of the pandemic and the way the pandemic was managed. But focusing particularly on the question of ethnicity and ethnic inequality, our broad conclusion was that the pandemic and the way it's been managed has generated considerable harm for ethnic minority people. So the way it's been managed as well as the pandemic itself. So clearly there's been lots of narrative about the ways in which ethnic minority people were potentially more vulnerable to the virus itself because they were more likely to be exposed because they already were facing considerable health harms from the inequalities they face and the inequalities themselves increasing risk. Plus some other narratives around biology and race which we can largely put to one side from a point of view of understanding the inequality. But nevertheless, so it wasn't just that though. It was all the other things that followed from the consequences of the interventions around the pandemic that were done on the basis that these interventions would impact on the population equally. But of course they weren't impacting equally across the population. And if you have lockdown, then it's going to impact differently on different groups of people depending upon their vulnerability. So we not only saw marked differences in death rates, but also the economic consequences, unemployment, furloughing and so on. In terms of social isolation, in terms of education and access to education and high quality education, in terms of mental health and in terms of interactions, importantly in terms of interactions with criminal justice. So those people who are enforcing the lockdown rules in particular. So that's one thing that we uncovered and were able to demonstrate reasonably effectively. But the other thing that we showed was a complete shortage of information and that has not changed particularly. A shortage of information on the inequalities faced by ethnic minority groups. But in terms of seeking fundamental explanations, again we talked about racism as the fundamental explanation and talked about structural racism, inequalities in access to resources, interpersonal racism and the exposure to insult and the reminder of your devalued status in society. And of course, crucially institutional racism, where those structural processes and interpersonal processes coalesce together and lead to unequal journeys through institutions. And we've seen this repeatedly throughout the pandemic, including most notably and most recently in relations to vaccination. And then just one more thing that was really crucial from this report, which was the role of community and community activism in mitigating some of the harms of these situations. And so I think as Mariko said earlier that the kind of place for the voluntary community sector in terms of providing support, providing resources and also activism we found was crucially important in terms of mitigating some of the harms. But the harms are there and the harms aren't being adequately monitored and the harms aren't being considered as we try and do interventions. So I've just very briefly come back to the question of vaccination and the ways in which vaccination was rolled out which paid no attention to the greater risk faced by ethnic minority people. And it would have been completely straightforward to have rolled out the vaccine in the areas where ethnic minority people lived as a priority in order to mitigate some of those harms. That's shocking stuff. No, definitely. I think that's something that possibly at some point later in the discussion Winston might be able to speak to as well. But just before we get to Winston, I'll come to you, Claudia. You're part of the Black Female Professors Forum, which is looking at how discrimination is worsening the impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and minority ethnic people in the UK and your work looks specifically at how young people and their families are impacted. Could you tell us a bit more about your findings? Okay. We haven't already, this project has only just started so we haven't gathered the data yet so I can't tell you anything about the findings but I can tell you a little bit about what we are aiming to do and how we're going about it. So the overall projects, and there are five projects, mine is only one, we're looking at resilience and well-being and looking at what sort of practices during the pandemic has been positive or negative in relation to impacting people's well-being and resilience. The overall co-power projects are looking at, there are five work packages looking at emergency powers in terms of how that's impacted Black and ethnic minority communities. Looking at leisure and exercise, one project is looking at leisure and exercise and lifestyles. One is looking at carers and my project in particular we're looking at the impact on children and young people, children from the age of 12 and their families so we're wanting to find out how the pandemic has had an effect on them in relation to the various things around well-being and resilience really. So we will be looking to talk to young people, a whole range of young people and in particular as I said before the pandemic has sort of presented issues that have had long-term effects on children and young people's mental health in terms of in the future because in relation to education, in relation to health, in relation to leisure, disproportionately it can be argued that Black and Asian and ethnic minority children are disproportionately affected because they were the groups who were more likely to have parents who were working as key workers, who were working in the front line, who had less opportunities to work from home, those kinds of things and so we wanted to really to look at the the effects of those things. Black and ethnic minority children also are more likely to be living in multi-generational households so there's a whole range of factors that we want to kind of just really explore and to find evidence to look at how it impacts resilience and well-being and also disproportionately Black and ethnic minority children have a more likely to have been in homes where they've lost relatives, they've lost parents, grandparents etc so we're wanting to kind of look at some of the nuances of that in relation to really kind of addressing what do policymakers need to think about in the future with regards to these populations of young people who will be impacted in the long term in the next generation in in relation to COVID-19 so we do not have any data as yet the project has only just started it started in February and it finishes in August 2022 so we're just preparing to start gathering our data and we'll be doing that in from June and in relation to the geographical areas that we'll be looking at, we'll be looking at London, we'll be looking at the Midlands and we'll be looking at North Yorkshire to for our sample in relation to those young people and the reasoning with regards to those areas is because when you look at the the COVID map you know when you look at the in terms of demographics and when you look at the COVID map it tells us something about where particular communities are located and what the particular issues might be in relation to the impact of COVID so that's that's where we are at the moment in relation to the project looking at specifically at black and ethnic minority children. That sounds fascinating it sort of shows how much work needs to go into uncovering some of these these issues so that's that gives you a little bit of an insight into how long these things take. I just had a question from audience who is responsible for writing these inequalities is it solely government or are there others who couldn't make a clear difference that and I'm guessing that question is just for everyone who'd like to jump in first who can I pick on first let's go with Winston because you haven't had me for a bit oh I think you'll mute it what one second oh yeah nice to me so who can write all these wrongs that's a really difficult one to answer well not it's not it's it's we're all have some kind of responsibility starting with government professional society generally but one of the challenges is actually and we'll come back to this is it's about people accepting that there are these wrongs in the first place and if no one is accepting that there are these wrongs then we can't really write them so simple answer is everyone needs to own that we have a non-equal society where there's disproportionality and then we can start to solve them no that's definitely recognition is a huge part of it Mariko do you have anything to say about that to jump in no I mean I really agree you know it's it's it's everyone owns these issues and the who is choosing the government as well I guess also like the you know in terms of micro workers that I want to address but later on it's also like employers plays a big role how the business is operates as well so I guess yeah it's it's you know it's it's everyone's issues otherwise you know it will not be able to address the inequality definitely um I've just got another um question that I'd like to read out um someone's asking if they'd be interested to know how various vaccination rollout strategies by PCNs have impacted across communities and that's from Martin um would James or or Winston would you like to to join in on that let's go with James so I think Winston will have um a lot to say about this but there has been this narrative around vaccine hesitancy um and part of the issue around vaccine hesitancy has been about the ways in which the distribution of the provision of vaccine has actually reached out to people who for various reasons are obstructed from accessing the vaccine so my local example I'm in Manchester is that if you use the Etihad Stadium as your vaccine distribution center then you exclude very large segments of the population who just can't get there or don't want to get there um that's just a trivial small example and and I'll leave it for Winston to say more about that but the point I was trying to make earlier was that we could have engineered right at the very beginning of um vaccine distribution the need to address the high risk of mortality amongst ethnic minority people as we did in relation to age older people are more likely to die and so therefore give it to the oldest first and then work your way down and we could have done something very similar in a very straightforward way in relation to race and ethnicity but your argument made by the vaccine committee was that it was too difficult to do that's just not the case in my from my point of view Winston before I come to you I'm going to ask you a question sort of in relation to this as well so if you could address those but um yeah if you've written some interesting articles for us about the need to move away from blaming poor vaccine take up among ethnic minorities on vaccine hesitancy as well as avoiding blaming racial disparities on genetic differences um could you talk about that and why you think those myths prevailed um at the start of the pandemic yes so just generally and I'm going to address some of the points that James has made but the thing about the pandemic and this whole situation it's thrown up a lot of confusing messages message in and sort of um just generally um not the kind of leadership that we expect that we would have expected so and it's quite complicated so I've got a few points to make around this so first of all in terms of vaccines and it's really important that we understand being apprehensive about taking any vaccine is in fact the default position of almost everyone not just people described as black Asian or any other kind of racial group it's it's a default position we don't we don't really want to take vaccines so when you think about vaccines they're biological medicines that are closely related to a specific pathogen and it's normally injected but given by injection so that's something that people are like and you normally give it to healthy people to prevent them from becoming ill so generally vaccines are a hard seller now to convince anyone to take a vaccine they need positive messaging from people they trust and in an ideal world that trusted message if you like come from government scientists and doctors providing the vaccine but for some groups particularly blacks but other groups as well I have to accept that um government scientists and doctors have not always been reliable messengers so they never that they're not going to take the message easily from them unless the message is provided in a way that they find acceptable so so well before um rollout I was being contacted by a number of people a number of groups saying you know we're really worried about this vaccine and I predicted that there would be poor vaccine uptake by the same groups I'm talking about I wrote a number of articles the first was particularly about the pitfalls and it relates to what James was saying of appearing to prioritize black people in particular for a new and at the time what was described as an untested vaccine when it was untested at the time or not widely distributed specifically because of a history of medical racism which affected black people so you could imagine that at that time saying right we're going to prioritize and give a new vaccine to black people it wouldn't have necessarily have always gone down well the intention was good as James says because these are the groups that were affected more but in practice it might have been really challenging provide particularly because the government wasn't that good at messaging to convince people that it was safe and it had been tested and that kind of I also wrote about how poor messaging by government to again these same communities would provide space for anti-vaxxers to take hold of the narrative so if you don't sort of give that clear message what happens is that people step into the space the anti-vaxxers and then start to raise questions about the efficacy and the safety of the vaccine related to those groups and also then how ignoring the problems caused by structural racism to talk about the delivery again something that James spoke about so again if governments are willing to accept that there are structural problems because the challenges that we face with the current vaccines are challenges that we face with other vaccines and also other medical treatments that also sort of left behind certain groups so so these warnings were in in were sort of ignored and people just sort of stuck with this sort of simple narrative with you like hesitancy and what hesitancy does is there's suggestions of ignorance in these communities so you're sort of blaming them and and and not taking the whole thing seriously and but what people wanted was as I said information so they can make their own decision that's what I call vaccine agency you provide them with the information then they make their decision if you don't provide the information they hesitate and they wait so the underlying truths about medical racism poor health provision and structural failures are difficult for our society and government to accept so it's I can see why they want to do that right now the other question you asked was about genetics and in terms of blaming genetic differences so a lot of responsible for the confused responsibility for the confusing messaging about susceptibility to the virus remember at the start of the pandemic um linking genes um sort of linking genes and race and ethnicity um was a failure by into um senior scientists to actually sort of basically make it clear that this wasn't happening they didn't do that and what that allowed again was this kind of idea that there's a link race that basically the virus was racialized and once you racialize a virus like COVID-19 then you racialize a treatment so it's really important that when you start to bring race into it you you clearly sort of give um clear lines of communication and sort of ideas otherwise people will sort of link the disease to the treatment that's doing the problem so right so blaming racial disparities on genetics is really a legacy we're used to doing that by colonial history and these ideas drove and sustained colonialism and slavery and sadly some of these ideas that remain an integral part of post-colonial society so that's what we're seeing today so it's really easy for a narrative to say right people are different based on genes because that's how you disjustified colonialism slavery to now linking that to disease and remember um these societies continue to dominate the world today those colonial societies those post-colonial societies the other ones have dominated and without these ideas about genetics um we then have to say right if it's not genetics it's actually racism and something that we as a society so blaming poor medical outcomes for disparities on genetics sort of absolves us of um culpability and it sort of provides what I call a fig leaf um it's sort of covering up the whole thing and without that we'd have to accept that it is simple racism and we don't we really don't want to do that so that's just some of the points I want to make now I'm sure I'll come back with some more later on no that's that's fascinating and um it's interesting just to hear about how much reluctance to even accept that racism is a factor leads to these even more myths um which we obviously don't need because that yeah sorry to interrupt but yeah that's because um that's how we see you know we're generally liberal democracies and liberal democracies and racism and racial inequality and structural racism don't go together so we try to think about it can't be our society it has to be those people who are suffering more forgetting that why those people are suffering more is because of the the inequalities that's pushed them in in sort of poor education poor housing poor whatever but we don't want to accept that so as I said we look for excuses now yeah no it's a shame um but hopefully we'll with conversations like these will move things forward um I wanted to come to you next to Marie Coe um just to talk about the fact that movements like South Asian hate have highlighted how COVID-19 has accelerated um discrimination and it's also shown how uh East and Southeast Asian migrant health workers in particular have have died disproportionately due to institutional racism um what do you wish people understood about how these issues work together yeah um so stop Asian hate movement shed lights on our communities and the COVID related hate crime and discriminations that we face but you know this is not new and for decades like like other minority communities um you know East and Southeast Asian communities also have experienced discriminations and including racial profiling and abuse and discriminations in educations and workplaces um you know myself being an East Asian woman I can tell you the widespread of hypersexualization objectivization of you know objectification of East and Southeast Asian women and sexual harassment and the violence that goes in hand in hand with the racial discrimination and I think this was also highlighted in the shootings in in in Atlanta which led to the the most recent stop Asian hate movement um talking about migrant health workers um East and Southeast Asian migrant particularly people from the Philippines contribute largely to the UK's health and social care there are the third largest nationality group in the NHS after British and Indian and the fourth biggest non-British nationality group in the social care sector um so health service journals research found that the Filipino or the single largest non-British nationality group of the NHS workers who died in the last year's first wave uh this comes with the Filipino nurses accounting for more than a fifth or 20% whereas Filipino nationals accounts for 3.8% of the old NHS nurses so also the more more recent figures suggest that the Filipino people makes up one in four COVID-19 death among NHS staff despite this another under-representation issues only nine nine Filipinos nine Filipino peoples have managed rural positions which have any abilities to influence strategy or policies in the NHS um during the pandemic at Kandangan Filipino Consortium a charity supporting Filipino migrants in the UK um which you know I myself work very closely with they've heard a number of accounts and testimonies of migrant frontline workers in the various sectors that they felt that they were precious to work in the settings where higher risk you know where there is higher risk of infections or they were not given adequate ease comparing to their white or British peers and thought that these treatments were due to their nationalities or ethnicities and I also want to point out that how migrants are particularly vulnerable to the impact of racism and discriminations in the UK's hostile environment and most migrant workers have their work permits that you know which are tied or touched to their employers with restrictions of type of work that they can perform so many people become relaxed to challenge unfair treatment or discriminations at work because their immigration status rely on their employers and many have spent a lot of money in order to finance their migrations and work placement however once in the UK they have no records to public funds so losing job meaning that losing income without any security and it may also affect your legal status the hostile environment migration policies which the equality and human rights commissions concluded that the home office broke the equality law when introducing it these have made migrants more vulnerable to racism and discriminations and we know many members of our migrant communities who would never report abuse from their partners because their immigration status is attached to their relationship or would never report hate crime to the police because they fear immigration law enforcement and the fear of immigration law enforcement has directly impacted to the access to the vaccine of these people with insecure status as well as being discussed by James and Winston we you know the most of these kind of most of the work to mitigate these and also distribute informations and providing support of people who are affected in these situations completely relying on community organisation like ours and community activism so this is the situations that we are in at the moment. That's a huge minefield and I think it leads quite nicely your observations into next question which is about what all your thoughts are on on the recent race report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities I'd like to start with James and then I'll come to Claudia afterwards or if you could jump in just after James but yeah what are your thoughts generally about the report? Yeah so the context of the report was twofold one was the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests and the highlighting of race ethnic inequality by that movement and the second was a government for some years in fact Theresa May put it in place collating data around race and ethnicity in the UK data that could be used to highlight inequality so given those two contexts I think the report itself is a terrible disappointment so here was an opportunity to do something very powerful which was lost and I guess where that opportunity was lost most was in its discussion of racism and how racism operates in our society and basically making the claim that while there may be some racism around us it's not that important anymore this is a historic problem it's not a contemporary problem anymore and making the accusation that those of us who make a claim to racism being important actually aren't very specific in what we're talking about don't have the data to support what we say and so on so not that racism doesn't exist but that it's not crucially important in terms of these inequalities and at points it becomes almost shocking so in the discussion of the Grenfell tragedy the Windrush scandal and the COVID-19 inequalities have arose from COVID-19 just a very brief discussion in an introductory section the quote from the report is outcomes such as these do not come about by design and are certainly not deliberately targeted but the Windrush scandal is a consequence of state policy so government policy enthusiastically implemented by government institutions by civil servants and their subcontracted agencies it did come about by design absolutely and it reflected kind of state processes and institutional processes as well as a whole set of interpersonal interactions the forms of racism that we talk about structural racism state processes access to resources institutional racism the ways in which these agencies operate in order to send people away from their country and of course the interpersonal racism that people face so so I usually lost opportunity particularly given that it did have a reasonably solid empirical basis so you can admire some of the ways in which data were used but not admire the ways in which the data were interpreted no definitely um Claudia just very briefly I would say going back to the question that we started with about the resistance to addressing um racial disparities I would say that the um the the report was very um very disappointing and it was also very um insulting in some ways uh to deny and that institutional racism and structural racism doesn't exist or it's it's not that significant but my overall my overall view of the whole thing is that I think this government is very clever it's very good at um getting black and ethnic minority individuals to dismantle all the advances that we're trying to make around anti-racism and I thought for me that illustrated that very well that it's black it's black and ethnic minority um members of this government or appointed by this government to dismantle the advances that we're trying to make with regards to racism and to me that's where the denial and the resistance kind of come and and and is manifested that's quite interesting um I think that's been a big a major issue um as part of the report basically the the suggestion being that if an ethnic minority person agrees or has commission or is a commissioner it must be true um yeah I know that's quite difficult um Marie Curve did you have any thoughts on on the report yeah um the yes the report also came of course brought a lot of disappointment and anger to our community as well but um I also wanted to point out that we were already disappointed before the report came up because the none of the 10 commissioners represented for East or Southeast Asian heritage and as a result they really misrepresented us um the word East Asian was used only once in the 258 page report a Southeast Asian also appeared once uh referring the time to include Chinese and Japanese people which is not correct um so in other occasions Chinese ethnicity was used as a proxy for East and Southeast Asian people so and also that I think the fact the report argued the factors rather than race you know such as geography or family influence social cultural or cultural or religious backgrounds have more significant impact on life chances implying that the racism has no links to these factors and ignored intersectionality by using it it just seems to be that it was using the selective data to support certain narratives and ideology and the report also reinforced the model minority myth of Chinese ethnic group as high achieving successful community ignoring the experiences of working class Chinese or other East and Southeast Asian people of different groups as well as intersectional inequalities uh issues within the communities as well but also putting us all against with other racialized marginalized communities no that's that's a hugely important point to make and one that I actually missed um that's that's insane as well um Winston before we're going to move to the next question soon but what are your thoughts on the report as well yeah I mean like everyone else when it first came out I you know it was quite upsetting and America makes a really good point that um had the people who were sort of leading this commission being the right group who understand issues around race and ethnicity and that kind of thing they'd have looked around and said right there are some people missing here that's the first if you're going to write a report about inequality you need to really get um viewpoints and voices from people who are affected you can't leave some people out but generally but I all you know so as I said there was a lot of noise it was also um a classical example of gaslighting where you're trying to prove to people that you know the right is wrong and wrong is right if you like um but anyway on the positive side there I think James mentioned this there was a lot of data included in the document and also reference so that's a good thing so anyone who is interesting so researchers will be helped by this because they can go they can ignore the conclusion they can go to the data and the references and get lots of information about racial disparity so accidentally they have actually you know sort of uncovered and put together quite a lot of data that people can use there's a lot of commendable and obvious recommendations some ignoring facts that have already been in the public arena so they made lots of recommendations we already know about a lot of these reports suggest that more research needs to be done but this is the stock answer over the years whenever you have a situation like this they say well let's do some more research and there are areas where we still need to do some more research but there's also areas where there's been research lying around for 20 years and we know what the conclusions are and they haven't taken those forward they just said we'll do we need to do more research I got the impression that those involved in the commission did not have the capacity and I want to say that the capacity or the willingness to make the best of the data some of the points were offensive as colleagues have said and sadly a lot of the analysis was selective and the conclusions were flawed and blinked just one example just one example they highlighted success of black african students at GCSE compared to black caribbean as a reason race was not a factor but this was such a simplistic comparison that they ignore the fact that for example black africans didn't do as well prior to GCSE and after GCSE when they go to A level they start to drop off and by university they you know they do really badly just think of the university warning app so they didn't understand those or make you know use those effectively ironically most of the recommendation and so they had lots and some of them were reasonable you needed the starting point is you have to accept that their structure racism yet to deliver on these recommendations yet the commission appeared to want to deny the existence of structure racism and so that's really confusing so partly because I do not believe I genuinely do not believe having listened to these people talk as well as what they've written they don't understand these definitions of racism structure racism so that is why they were denying it because sadly they didn't really know what they were doing no definitely and you've sort of answered my second question as well about what you would say our biggest blind spot is in terms of researching these inequalities Claudia I'd like to come to you with that actually too what in terms of either a lack of research or excuses that are given as to why we're not looking into certain issues what would you say the the biggest blind spot is is in terms of researching these inequalities well well often I think we don't get enough research commissioned to to just focus specifically on race and to focus on black and ethnic minority and diverse communities and then the in relation to the areas that I research in relation to children black and ethnic minority children and if we just take black children there is often and we need to disaggregate and look at different groups of children to look at the different processes and the different experiences that they have going on to really get a good sense of what is going on here for children I mean the example that Winston gave in with regards to the civil report with regards to African children the points that were made about African children it's really often we don't get a chance to sort of dive down to look to look structurally and racially what is going on here for these groups of children but so that's a that's a key factor for me and another key factor is also is also there not enough research I'm always quite shocked in my field in social social work social welfare I'm always quite shocked sometimes when I'm asked to peer review research proposals or research reports that are meant to be you know population studies sometimes or that often very little is done in relation to looking at race and the contribution it's making to particular experiences and the implications for for policy so there is there is often an invisibility really to in around those issues and those are blind spots for me definitely um but sort of coming towards the end um so I just wanted to uh get in a question from the audience quickly um before I might ask my last question but um this would just be for anyone to answer but does the way the virus has been racialized in terms of biological falsehoods etc have worrying implications for recovery um as well what immediate steps can be taken to address this risk and that's from Tess um words who would like to jump in there that sounds like a natural question for for Winston but I see James you've unmuted yourself yeah yeah can I can I say something in in relation to that and I think this is not a novel problem um uh there are a whole range of issues people have tried to find big people have tried to lay the responsibility on the group or individual concern it's either your genes or it's your culture or something related to those things and we've seen this discussion going way back into the 50s and all the way and of course the historical legacy of slavery and so on so this is not a new problem um but it does have immediate implications for what happens in in recovery because if if the problem facing ethnic minority peoples because they've been safe for example multi-generational households or they're not sufficiently committed to education or whatever it might be lone parent households whatever it might be then it becomes a problem for those individuals to fix rather than one where we focus on the processes and structures around them that cause the problem so what what we need is a recognition of racism in the ways that we've been discussing but also then we need a solution a solutions focus on on racism which from my point of view means fundamental reform in institutions so forcing institutions to shift what they do in order to mitigate the harms that people face both within those institutions but also outside those institutions um public institutions could do a great deal to mitigate inequality if they were willing to recognize it and see it as part of their function to address it oh i hope that happens um carry on jump in Winston yeah can i say that this this question of persons point in the chat actually relates to the blind sport and the blind sport is that there's you know if you think about that there's something missing in the field of vision if you like and what's missing is a lack of black academics black professors senior managers basically people in strategic positions who can basically commission the research or actually see what the problems are like America pointed out that you know you you have to see a problem using a certain lens and the blind sport is we don't always necessarily have that and also to interpret and understand the inequalities and one of the ways you do that and that's what's going to be really challenge for us going forward is that um it unless the government puts in lots more funding um those spaces can't be filled by people who really now really understand because it's a it's a finite amount of funding so unless because people are happy to say yeah we're in favor of equality but no one's willing to give up their job their professional positions or their senior managerial positions to someone who could do better a because they it'd be you know it's a really hard thing for humans to do but also historical racism means people actually think they do they would do a better job than the people from these communities who you know who they'd be letting in so that they're really complicated arguments there but that's the only way it's going to change if we actually allow more people in to to into these strategic positions definitely um now we're we're coming up to the last couple of minutes um so I've I'll just uh skip to a fun question for your um which is basically do you think that the uh race report will stand the test of time uh and let's start with um Mariko because we haven't heard from you for a while I have no and you know I think we really have to go back to the basic questions that uh whose interest is this serving you know who are benefiting from this report and also the hostile environment policies that I talked about or who are benefiting from the cheap labor of exploitation of black Asian minority ethnic people and all this time but especially particularly during the pandemic um I felt that you know the the report has shown us the political act of neglect as I said to minority ethnic groups and you know even felt like attempted to erase our experiences in progress but we know for the fact that our experiences will um you know we I I feel that the you know what's been said a lot about representation but with our fair representation and meaningful participation of relevant people it is very difficult to address issues such as institutional racism and we need more human rights-based approach rather than um security or economics around interest um with you know with the rights-based approach we will be able to address not only racial inequality of disparities but also disparity that exists in our society due to due to other factors um of the society as well I I feel that you know as myself as a practitioner as a advocate of the civil society we must work together across um racial ethnic groups uh we were inspired also supported by DLM movement and you know we also need to work together with other minority groups academics journalists and other like-minded actors to keep challenging the idea which is that it's behind this report using the evidence which are our own experiences. That sounds brilliant and um Claudia what about you what are your thoughts on whether it will start at the time? I was trying to think of all the other reports that we've had over the few years that you can you know like the the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report that you know it those are landmark um I don't know um I as an academic I think in terms of standing the course of time I think in years to come it will be used you know you can use it to um to develop a discourse around how you how you um how you don't do a government uh commission report and how you how you you um try and create a different narrative to deny that our institutional racism exists or actual racism exists and I would also add as well as addressing racism structural racism but we also need to talk and think about social class as well because I think social class when it intersects with racism is is also the key factors there as well. Definitely and just quickly uh James or Winston do you have anything to add there? Well I'm just going to say um in an academic writing we and Chloe saw in my thunder you have papers that are highly cited but some of them are not because they're really good but because people are saying this is not how to do something so I think that's what it would be and also it will act as a catalyst for future study so it will stand the test of time but not for the reasons your thought. I think so um and I'd argue it won't stand the test of time um and I won't stand the test of time partly because of the research programs that are now being launched and started so Claudia spoke about her the one she's involved in the central dynamics of ethnicity is also involved in a very good program research funded on the same scheme and we're doing a big survey as part of that um the evens study if you just look to evensurvey.co.uk you'll see more information on that so that will generate a whole set of evidence that will challenge um the premise of the report and then coupled with that is activism and I think real grassroots activism uh which challenges the narrative provided by the report and I think those two things together high quality evidence and activism will then put pressure on those institutions that are trying to behave themselves to improve what they do uh and that will just change I hope that will just change the climate within which that report stands uh had it won't stand the test of time as a consequence sorry I've taken it off. Thank you James no that was a perfect uh place to end um thank you so much for joining me that that's all we have time for um unfortunately but that's been a really lively discussion and I hope um everyone goes and checks out all the different projects that are coming together to uncover the truths about um inequalities um that have been exacerbated by COVID um so I hope you enjoyed this webinar today uh it was brought to you by the conversation and the IPPO uh a big thank you to the panelists for their time uh and giving us these fascinating insights into this important topic thank you Claudia Bernard, James Nazru, Mariko Hayashi and Winston Morgan and thanks to all of our viewers as well uh for joining us and for your excellent questions um until next time thanks thank you thank you