NO! Covid-19 does NOT show UK is racist!

At almost every daily Covid-19 briefing now there is a question about the effect of Covid-19 on the BAME community. And it’s true that there is a disproportionate effect on certain, but not all, ethnic minorities. Here are some thoughts.

There is no such thing as the BAME community. There are many different non-caucasian people living in the UK. The idea that they are all a single group who all think the same, want the same things or are all equally susceptible to Covid-19 is an example of how you can badly muddy the waters by over-simplifying.

What worries me is the underlying tone of these questions. I think we can all hear the attempt to insinuate that we are a racist country.

I came to an age where I could understand about racism in the mid-1970s. You either have no grasp of our history since then or simply be speaking in bad faith to suggest that we are a racist country in 2020.

An analogy: a man drinks 40 pints of beer every week and is called a drunkard. 40 years later he only drinks 1 pint of beer a week. Ah yes, but he still drinks beer, so he’s still a drunkard. No, he bloody isn’t!

When you are dealing with a population of approx. 70 million people you are always going to have a small percentage who behave badly. 

For example, there is a very small percentage who commit major crime; likewise there is a very small percentage who continue to be racist, i.e. judge people not on the content of their character and their actions but on the colour of their skin.

Sadly, a single figure percentage of 70 million is still a large number but as with the drunkard analogy, it’s simply unfair and unreasonable to say that we are a racist country now.

It is simply disingenuous & unrealistic to suggest that until it can be proven that there is not a single racist person left, it’s acceptable to continue saying we are a racist country. Any reasonable person can see why that is not a rational or fair argument. 

We can never get to the point, let alone prove, that there are literally no racists and anyway, the definition of racism is likely to be changed to suit those who want to continue to peddle the ‘UK is racist’ line. Why?  Because playing with words and definitions is what people do who want an excuse to continue with the ideological tropes they have burned into their hearts. 

They just can’t let them go however much things change– it’s become who they are!

It is also just as possible for an ethnic minority person to be racist as an ethnic majority person. You only need to hear some of the things said by David Lammy MP hiding behind parliamentary privilege to see that. 

There are also various ethnic minority groups who are racist/ethnicist or show religious hatred to other ethnic minority groups; something rarely spoken about.

Now for the virus. Viruses spread more easily and faster the more dense the population. Where is the population most dense? Large city conurbations. And where do the vast majority of ethnic minority people live? – yep, that’s right!

Culturally, compared to the ethnic majority population, ethnic minority groups tend to live in households with more people and multiple generations in them – this is also a population density issue but on an individual household level.

Also, there are certain diseases/conditions that certain ethnic groups are more susceptible to than others.

As Shabnam Nasimi notes in her article for the online magazine Quillette on 1^st May, “…black people are more likely than white people to die of many diseases—not just this one. In other cases, the reverse is true…..white people are more likely than black people to die of chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, and eight different types of cancer.”

I would encourage you to read the whole article before being tempted by the bad-faith trope of racism as the cause for the covid-19 ethnic fatality disparities. 

There are a number of non-racist reasons why some ethnic minority groups are hit harder than others, cultural as well as medical.

Quillette article 1st May, 2020

The AGE fatality disparity is far worse, and what about the MALE/FEMALE fatality disparity?

Ah, but no ideological point-scoring available there, so they are barely mentioned.

Anyway, I’ve tried to explain that we are NOT a racist country in any fair-minded sense & why certain ethnic groups are being hit harder than others. You’re of course free to agree or not.

I am immensely proud of where we’ve moved to and the distance we have travelled since the 1970s.

I just won’t sit back and allow people with motives rooted in bitter, out-of date, divisive & hateful identity politics to lump me or the vast majority in with the ‘racist’ slur without speaking out!