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BME housing associations express ‘disappointment and disbelief’ at race report
A group of more than 45 Black and minority ethnic (BME) housing associations has hit out at a report on race commissioned by the government, calling its findings “incoherent and inconsistent”.
BME National, which represents BME housing associations across the country, said in a statement that its “overall feeling on reading the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (or Sewell) Report is of disappointment and disbelief”.
The statement continued: “Disappointment that it views racism through a particular political lens, and disappointment that it adds nothing to the debate about tackling racism, and takes a discredited and uninformed view of the problems in our society.
“Disbelief as it cherry-picks data to suit an ideological narrative, and dismisses the lived experience of many. At a time of a global pandemic which has disproportionately claimed the lives of thousands of people from minority backgrounds, it downplays and minimises the effect of structural and institutional racism which has already been acknowledged as having a significant negative impact in the previous Macpherson, Lammy, Marmot, Williams reviews.”
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The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report was published at the end of last month after being commissioned by the government in the wake of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
It has attracted criticism for its findings, which include a foreword from Tony Sewell, chair of the commission, that said: “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities.”
BME National said that the report’s findings do not reflect the experiences of its members and highlighted a number of “major housing inequalities”, including the fact that one in three homeless households are from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to one in seven from the general population.
“The report only touches on housing slightly and (as is usual) examines homeownership rather than looking at wider tenures of social and private rented sector housing where inequalities are also exacerbated,” the organisation said.
It continued: “Of critical importance to us is what is missing. Nothing on building cohesive communities and breaking down concentrations of deprivation, nothing on the housing crisis and market failure, one mention of the Grenfell Tower tragedy (and nothing about the racial disparities highlighted there), inclusive leadership and governance is only mentioned in passing in terms of the education sector, and there is nothing there about organisations reflecting the communities that they serve.”
The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has been approached for comment.
