Discrimination is still pervasive in society
SURESH Chauhan’s letter (“Race report does not reflect life experience”, Mailbox, April 3) on how little the recent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report had reflected his own life experience as an immigrant in commerce prompts me to write of my own experience as the son of an Irish economic migrant (twice beaten up at work because of his ethnicity) growing up in West London.
The report trumpets the lessening of the visible signs of discrimination.
One can agree with this to some extent: no one would now dare to exhibit signs in their windows saying “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, as I saw as a child – would they?
But pervasive discrimination still exists and nowhere more visibly than in much policing: though the legitimacy of the BLM demonstrations in Bristol is arguable, the violence meted out by a section of the police is indisputable – just watch some of the videos online – and why else would the police assault a reporter (from the Daily Mirror) just doing his job?
All this reminds me of my youth when the killing of (protesting teacher) Blair Peach by the Metropolitan Police 1979 in Southall – just a mile away from my childhood home – still has had no accountability for any of the perpetrators, nor closure for the victim’s family.
The report glosses over that . Though the “sus” laws (from “suspected person”) of the 1970s have been repealed, largely thanks to the campaigning of people like Paul Boateng, black people, whatever their class or educational attainment, are still stopped by the police more frequently on the basis of colour.
The government’s own recent data show that there were 54 stop and searches for every 1,000 black people compared with only six for white people.
Though black people make up 3 per cent of the UK population, they make up 8 per cent of all deaths in police custody.
Even as recently as last June, the behaviour of the Metropolitan Police in the incident with Bianca Williams and Ricardo do Santos reinforces this observed underlying prejudice, with both black parents being handcuffed after a minor incident and, even worse, the Met entering their three-month-old baby on to the police Merlin database.
Glossing over prejudice by that very government responsible for cutting 20,000 police jobs and cutting the Crown Prosecution Service budget helps no one.
It convinces no one – except readers of the Daily Mail and racists.
Worse still, it contributes towards undercutting public trust in the frontline officers of Leicestershire Police who, in my experience, try their very best to do a valiant and even-handed job under difficult and all-too-often under-resourced conditions.
Michael Tully, Glen Parva