UK race report a whitewash – UN

UN HUMAN rights experts have rejected a review commissioned by Britain’s government into race inequality as a bid to “normalise white supremacy despite considerable research and evidence of institutional racism”.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, issued on March 31, said Britain should be seen as a “model for other white-majority countries” – a conclusion that provoked fury from domestic critics who branded it a “whitewash”.

“In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent,” the UN working group of experts on people of African descent said.

“The suggestion that family structure, rather than institutionalised and structural discriminatory practices are central features of the Black experience is a tone-deaf attempt at rejecting the lived realities of people of African descent and other ethnic minorities in the UK.”

Britain stood by its report, with a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the human rights experts’ conclusions misrepresented the review’s findings. “This report in no way condones racist behaviour but highlights racism and inequality.”

The report was ordered by Johnson’s government after widespread Black Lives Matter protests last summer, triggered by the death of George Floyd in police custody in the US.

The experts said the report used familiar arguments to justify racial hierarchy.