The difference between Biden and Johnson on Race

Within a few hours of taking office as the 46th President of the United States, President Joe Biden made his intentions to acknowledge and tackle race inequality abundantly clear. He signed two critical executive orders that will give African, Latin, Asian, Native Americans, Muslims and other minority ethnic communities in the United States great hope. These included an executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the Federal Government.

This federal government piece of legislation means that in one stroke the machinery of the Central Government with all its resources must bend towards this key objective.

Biden’s other executive order in this area was to lift former President Trump’s punitive ban on many Muslim countries who could not enter the US.

This direction of the US government’s political will is in stark contrast to that of our own Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

It has been over six months since organisations such as ours have demanded that the Government have a Covid-19 Race Equality Strategy. This is to confront the devastating impact that Covid has had on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, past, present and future.

Covid-19 has laid bare the persistent fault lines of race inequality in areas such as health, housing, education, the criminal justice system and employment. The prolonged nature of the disease has just meant these gaps in inequality have grown. As we sadly predicted several months ago, and as the TUC have highlighted just last week, BAME workers have been hit at disproportionately harsh rates in job losses. As much as 26 times harder, according to TUC analysis, as a result of Covid-19. We demanded the Government take specific action to mitigate what we saw would occur if no action was taken.

But far from acting, the Government seems to be stuck in denial.

After much public pressure, the Government announced its Race Disparity commission in August that was due to report at the end of the year. That has now slipped to the end of February, but in that interim period and as an indication of the direction of travel its Chair Dr Tony Sewell said in his statement just before Christmas that his early findings are that there are bigger social determinants to inequality such as class, gender and geography, rather than race. This, from the Chair of a unit whose raison d’être is to focus on tackling racial disparities.

Worse still, others such as Runnymede Trust have accused the Government of pandering to ‘white nationalism’, as Government Ministers state that their focus should be on the northern working class, which is often double-speak for white working class.

There is hope with the Biden – Harris historic presidency that has ousted the most toxic, divisive President in living memory. They now set out their stall that will both heal their divided nation whilst addressing those racial barriers that existed long before Trump or Covid.

I hope that our Prime Minister will now show similar leadership that both acknowledges the systemic racial fault lines and has a grand plan to deliver it - better late than never!

Simon Woolley

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A call to action...

For 24 years OBV have fought to ensure black and minority ethnic participation and representation in civic society. Efforts in continuing to do so though, relies on your help. That way we can continue this fight for greater race equality. What would give us a tremendous boost is if today, you made that small donation yourselves, but even more importantly if you encouraged others to do likewise.