Our new report explores the diversity of opinion within Britain’s ethnic minority communities at a time of pandemic and protest.
During a time when questions of race relations, racism and systemic discrimination in British society have come to the fore, HOPE not hate Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Trust have conducted a major survey of opinion across Britain’s Black and ethnic minority communities to better understand our country’s experiences during this time.
Our rare survey looked at opinion on a range of social and personal issues from Black Lives Matter protests, debates over statues and historical racism, the effects of Covid-19, views on policing, intercommunity relations, identity and more.
Though the limitations of the administrative term BAME are well debated, our unique sampling of just ethnic minority communities gave us a chance to outline both the universally shared experiences resulting from being a minority and the unique perspectives of the many varied faiths, races, generations and heritages within Britain.
Our report found:
- Widespread support for Black Lives Matter protests across ethnic minorities.
- A lack of faith in the police and the courts, but with the benefit of the doubt extended to most individual officers
- Evenly divided opinion as to whether the UK is one of the least racist countries in the world and whether you can admire someone’s achievements even if they had racist views.
- A scepticism around the ‘statue debate’ which was seen by many as a politically correct distraction from the real debate
- Both a generation gap and ‘immigration gap’ when it came to assessments of racism
- Racism is one of people’s biggest concerns but most believe that they are in control of their future
- A consensus amongst ethnic minorities on the importance of black history and BLM
- Worrying sense of alienation from political representation, particularly amongst women
- Greater economic hardship as a result of Covid-19 and lockdown compared to wider population
- Increasing importance of religion and religious identity especially for younger generation
- Generally positive intercommunal feeling but not without noteworthy pockets of tensions and frictions
