Report

In defence of British openness

This report from UK think tank Civitas looks at evidence and ideas on how we might think about a multiracial country.

In this major new study of multi-ethnic Britain, Richard Norrie, makes the case that ethnic minority individuals fare better here than in the familial countries of origin, with a confident minority middle-class. Comparing the prospects of black people in this country to other European countries also reveals a positive picture, despite real problems that exist. In new data this work discovers that 1 in 6 non-white British workers are in top professional roles compared to 1 in 8 white British workers. Almost a quarter of British Indian and Chinese workers (24 per cent) are in the top ‘higher managerial and professional’ classes – twice the figure for white Britons.

Our author examines the fallout from the Government’s Sewell report which provoked ‘fire and fury’ from the commentariat for finding that whatever statistical differences there were between ethnic or racial groups, they more often than not had little to do with either race or racism. The book finds these commentators are ‘wide off the mark, often resorting to critiques that the report “denied the lived-experience”, without any objective basis on which this claim could be measured or judged.’ This Civitas book is a defence of British institutions and provides a different way to think about race, that sees people of an ethnic minority as inheritors and custodians of the British way of life as much as anyone else, sharing responsibility for its defence and upkeep.