TRIGGERnometry - ＂Our Report Found No Evidence of Widespread Institutional Racism＂ - Mercy Muroki

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:08.880 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:13.780 I'm delighted to say we have a fascinating guest for you today. She is one of the commissioners

00:00:18.240 of the recent race and disparity report, Mercy Marocchi. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:22.400 Thank you for having me.

00:00:23.500 It's so good to have you. Listen, before we get into the subject itself, just tell everybody

00:00:28.180 a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been your journey through life

00:00:32.820 that brings you here? Well, as you said, I was one of 10 commissioners on the recent race and

00:00:39.920 ethnic disparities report. The government established the commission about a year ago

00:00:45.540 following the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movement to basically look into race

00:00:52.240 and ethnic disparities and to produce a report kind of summarising what's going on,

00:00:58.220 why disparities are taking place. And I was chosen as one of the independent commissioners

00:01:04.180 because of sort of my background in terms of, I've done a lot of social policy work and I have

00:01:12.220 looked at race. I've done, throughout my academic and professional career, I've done quite a lot of

00:01:17.860 stuff on race and ethnic disparities.

00:01:20.700 I've also kind of done lots of commentary

00:01:23.640 on issues of social class, race, things like that.

00:01:29.380 So, yeah, that's why I was chosen to be one of 10 commissioners.

00:01:33.400 And, yeah, the report's just been published

00:01:36.220 and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of it today.

00:01:40.980 And so you said that it was George Floyd.

00:01:44.220 Was that the main reason?

00:01:45.340 because it felt things were going so well with you know so says the white bloke but

00:01:50.120 things were going much better than they ever have been regarding race and all of a sudden last

00:01:55.200 summer it seemed to explode was that the real reason behind it were there other reasons as well

00:01:59.840 well i mean it was a catalyst the george floyd thing and obviously it was happened in america

00:02:05.900 didn't it and i think we have a tendency to americanize the debate on race don't we and so

00:02:13.120 So obviously the protests were up here as well and everybody saw the news

00:02:19.080 and all the protests that were happening, particularly in London.

00:02:23.340 And so I suppose, you know, as the government,

00:02:27.080 they had to respond to that in a quite substantial way.

00:02:31.160 And so that's why I guess they set up the commission.

00:02:35.540 And it's good to have you here.

00:02:37.360 We've had at least one, I think, of the other commissioners.

00:02:40.320 in fact, Dr. Tony Sola himself on the show quite a while ago, and others involved in it also as

00:02:47.760 well. So let's get into talking about some of the findings of the report. It's obviously been

00:02:54.040 commented on quite a lot, and we'll get to the reaction a little bit later. But let's talk about

00:02:58.780 the report. Give us some of the headline items on it, because it broke it down into crime and

00:03:04.660 policing, education, health, and other areas, family breakdown, all that sort of thing. So

00:03:09.540 if you were to give us a summary that you wanted people to take away from this interview of

00:03:14.620 the main findings of the report what were they the main finding was really that firstly Britain

00:03:22.260 has come a really long way particularly in the last 50 years in terms of just outcomes for

00:03:28.200 different ethnic minority groups I mean that that is the big finding that a lot of people don't like

00:03:34.420 to admit especially people in the kind of race relations industry but we have definitely come

00:03:39.900 a really long way um I know from surveys over the last year there are people who think racism has

00:03:46.400 actually gotten worse in the country so um even though it feels intuitive to say of course things

00:03:52.900 have got better there is a you know large group of people who don't think that way so um you know

00:03:58.040 our findings across the board we looked at four areas education employment crime and policing and

00:04:03.880 health it showed that things have gotten better the other big thing really was that this BAME 1.00

00:04:11.040 we've all heard of BAME black and minority ethnic category is just not a useful term to describe

00:04:17.940 what's actually going on in terms of ethnicity and disadvantage ethnicity and outcomes across

00:04:24.120 lots of social policy areas because actually ethnic groups particularly when you break them

00:04:31.000 down into subgroups so black african black caribbean indian pakistani etc you see actually

00:04:37.800 they have wildly different outcomes so this idea that there is one experience of um race and

00:04:45.820 ethnicity and disadvantage split between the white group and the bame group um you know all the 1.00

00:04:52.620 evidence we looked at completely kind of busted that myth so what we found was that there is lots

00:05:01.760 of different experiences groups ethnic minority groups are some are doing really well even better

00:05:07.760 than the white british population particularly indian and chinese across the board and then

00:05:13.940 other groups remain kind of at the bottom of the league table and actually those two groups tend to

00:05:18.840 be black caribbean um individuals particularly children white working class children as well

00:05:25.460 um and other groups that aren't as spoken about um like roma gypsy population you know

00:05:32.380 all those kinds of groups and actually our report was the first one that had that gave the white 0.81

00:05:39.240 category equal weight because we were come we weren't coming at this to say let's look at ethnic

00:05:44.360 minorities um we were saying okay we've been presented with all these ethnic groups they're

00:05:50.060 equally valuable and so let's look at the data equally and so whereas other reports hadn't

00:05:56.520 perhaps looked at outcomes for white british groups and white ethnic groups um we did that and

00:06:03.600 um you know finally i'm sure everybody would have seen the headlines and particularly if you're from

00:06:10.080 the UK about we said racism doesn't exist so institutional racism is a myth that's not what

00:06:16.180 we said whatsoever at all um what we said was what we looked at all the evidence and we didn't find

00:06:23.460 evidence of you know widespread systemic racism across any of the kind of four policy areas we

00:06:29.800 looked at we didn't say institutional racism is a myth in and of itself we we didn't say the

00:06:36.460 concept is illegitimate. Actually, you know, I keep pointing people who are making the claim

00:06:43.700 that we've said institutional racism is bogus to, you know, page 36 of the report, which actually

00:06:50.260 defines what we consider institutional racism to be, and actually sets out a framework for kind

00:06:55.940 of understanding different manifestations of racism. So this idea that we would go out to

00:07:01.060 define this concept while simultaneously saying it's a myth is you know it's not very intellectually

00:07:07.900 coherent so what we said is given the evidence we looked at and we looked at a lot of evidence

00:07:12.840 we didn't find evidence of widespread you know systemic racism institutional racism

00:07:19.100 and you were talking about these groups one of the things that I found very interesting about

00:07:23.400 the report was saying that geography is almost more important than race as to outcomes you're

00:07:29.560 far more likely to do well, for example, if you live in London than if you live in Middlesbrough.

00:07:34.500 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, on top of kind of socioeconomic indicators driving

00:07:40.740 ethnic disparities, geography was a massive one. And, you know, for instance, if you just look at

00:07:49.060 the 10 most deprived neighbourhoods, one in three, nearly one in three Pakistani people live in those

00:07:54.940 neighbourhoods compared to under one in 10 white British people. So you can really kind of map out

00:08:03.940 geography onto the disadvantages that are taking place for different ethnic groups. And once you

00:08:09.180 start doing that, you get a more clearer picture of why it is that, you know, certain groups fare

00:08:15.700 particularly badly. So yeah, geography was a massive one. And I think that's often alongside

00:08:23.960 class as well. That's often not a factor that's appreciated. And that's where, again, our report

00:08:30.680 was looking at all these different factors that weren't necessarily ethnicity, weren't necessarily

00:08:36.340 race. And we found evidence that these factors were actually driving a lot of the disparities.

00:08:42.900 Mercy, you mentioned the word class, and I think people living in Britain all have a sense of what

00:08:48.900 that is. But how do you define that in the context of trying to do an evidence-based report? What

00:08:54.320 does class mean? Yeah, so class, there are kind of acknowledged, accepted indicators used to

00:09:02.480 kind of establish what class is. I mean, obviously, class in and of itself is a complicated

00:09:09.340 concept to define because it means different things to different people. If you're measuring

00:09:13.640 kind of income only that might not be necessarily a good indicator but you know with the data sets

00:09:20.100 that we used and you know for example we commissioned a new research from the University

00:09:25.140 of Oxford a lot of the data we used was actually national data so really robust data sets that have

00:09:31.900 these indicators in them so we weren't just kind of making it up we were using kind of pre-established

00:09:38.580 definitions of these things and using you know really large nationally representative data sets

00:09:45.340 you know that statisticians have very much taken care to make sure that the data sets are really

00:09:52.780 robust so you know I'll leave statisticians to kind of figure out how to calculate all these

00:10:00.840 things. And the thing that I find particularly interesting because I have a background in it

00:10:05.840 like you do is education and seeing the outcomes of the children and particularly when you know

00:10:14.260 when people say education the education system is systemically racist I mean there are certain

00:10:19.840 points where you you think to yourself well you might have a point for instance if we look at

00:10:23.900 exclusions but if you look at the difference between black African and black Caribbean

00:10:28.960 especially the boys the outcomes they're huge yeah absolutely and this is another kind of

00:10:35.540 point I like to raise when people talk about education system is institutionally racist.

00:10:40.960 And these aren't just, you know, people online, randoms. I think one of the kind of

00:10:48.220 heads of these big teaching unions, I can't remember which one, recently did come out and

00:10:53.120 say that education system is institutionally racist. So these are kind of people at the top

00:10:57.300 of education making these claims, often not very much backed up by robust evidence. But

00:11:03.640 to take that point of we hear black exclusions as an example for when you say, well, why is the

00:11:10.800 education system institutionally racist? And you're right, if you look at the outcomes between

00:11:16.720 black Caribbean and black African, wildly different, not only in terms of their performance,

00:11:23.560 particularly in secondary school, where you see black African kids outperforming, white British

00:11:28.300 kids outperforming the national average but in and then you see Caribbean kids kind of all the 1.00

00:11:34.180 way at the bottom of the league table um but in exclusions as well because actually African kids

00:11:39.720 are no more likely to be excluded from school than their white British counterparts it's Caribbean

00:11:45.760 kids where that disparity really is there so this kind of speaks to the point of kind of you know

00:11:51.920 you can't conflate even just saying black I see so many headlines black exclusions black kids this

00:11:57.360 black kids that and it just doesn't make it's not very clever to do that not only because it's just 1.00

00:12:05.800 completely neglecting the fact that it's not black kids it's there's caribbean kids on one 0.89

00:12:11.200 hand african kids on the other and even that is quite simplistic as well um but it feeds into this 0.64

00:12:19.620 idea that if you're black just just if you're black then the education system's out to get you

00:12:25.300 It has nothing else to do with anything else going on in your life,

00:12:28.460 like culture or family or anything like that. 0.99

00:12:31.260 But it's just, if you're black, then you'll be screwed in the education system and in life. 0.98

00:12:35.880 And so those kinds of really simplistic narratives or analyses just don't help the debate whatsoever. 0.97

00:12:43.240 And we've been dancing around the topic of looking at why white British and black Caribbean kids,

00:12:49.400 particularly the boys, are doing less well than every other subgroup.

00:12:53.900 why is that mercy is it because of the fatherlessness issue in those communities is it

00:12:59.660 because they don't value education or is there something else going on so we don't really know

00:13:05.820 is the probably the easiest answer and you know in the report we've one of our recommendations

00:13:11.040 is to actually do the first proper deep dive look into why it is certain ethnic groups are doing

00:13:19.060 really well and how we can replicate those factors we've heard stuff about kind of immigrant optimism

00:13:25.000 and that's you know a theory for white African kids particularly immigrant kids and just generally

00:13:31.280 immigrants tend to do better Caribbean kids and Caribbean families don't tend to be immigrants

00:13:39.460 so we don't know and yes those kinds of factors such as family are important surely because

00:13:50.940 you know in the report we found that 63 percent of Caribbean children are growing up in a lone

00:13:58.780 parent household and that's absolutely staggering to me because you know that's six and ten kids

00:14:07.360 growing up and it is most likely going to be without a father because they'll be largely

00:14:12.740 single mums so to pretend that firstly those kinds of factors couldn't possibly be driving 1.00

00:14:18.980 any of the disparities is you know doing those kids a disservice I think and it's very disingenuous

00:14:25.700 and also I think the reason people haven't touched that subject is because then you get

00:14:31.480 accused of demonizing single parents or nobody really wants to go down that route and you know

00:14:37.700 families in general the concept of strong unstable families are seen as some kind of backward right

00:14:43.720 wing thing these days isn't it so there's a lot of reasons why I think we're not talking about

00:14:49.480 why it is that certain groups are not doing so well because it touches on difficult uncomfortable

00:14:55.820 topics but one of the other main recommendations is actually for the government to set up a review

00:15:05.380 into families the kind of to look at the underlying factors driving that relate to family that are

00:15:13.540 driving outcomes and how families can be better supported given that family structures do drive

00:15:19.100 so many outcomes, basically. It just occurred to me that people watching this with a more

00:15:26.200 critical eye might be like, OK, so your conclusions in the report were the systemic racism doesn't

00:15:32.240 seem to be an issue, right? Is that broadly accurate? It's that given the evidence we looked

00:15:40.200 at, that's not a conclusion we could make because we could make conclusions that weren't rooted in

00:15:46.840 the evidence we looked at so it's not to say it's not an issue it's just in the evidence and in

00:15:53.060 these four areas that we looked at we didn't find evidence that there was systemic racism driving

00:15:59.060 so in the in the things that you looked at which is policing and crime employment health and

00:16:03.480 education you did not find systemic racism yeah based on the evidence yes absolutely okay so we're

00:16:08.580 clear on that yeah but you're not denying the racism exists and people experience racism

00:16:13.960 Absolutely not. And that is why our very first recommendation is to tackle racist actions.

00:16:23.800 Again, a lot of this rhetoric, I think, about the denied racism, you know, you just have to look at recommendation one.

00:16:32.520 And then you figure out, no, we're not, because our top recommendation is to actually empower the Equalities Watchdog,

00:16:39.680 the Quality and Human Rights Commission to do more, to have more powers to kind of tackle racism,

00:16:45.940 particularly in relation to online racism. And we did find evidence of overt racism, particularly

00:16:52.060 online. And in fact, you found that people from minority backgrounds experience more

00:16:58.940 abuse and discrimination, et cetera, online versus the white population.

00:17:04.080 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So these aren't things we're denying. And I think you'd have to be an idiot or a racist to deny that, you know, there is racism online and there is overt racism in society because there's all sorts of awful things in society.

00:17:21.440 so yes we didn't find evidence that institutional racism was driving the disparities but could there 0.99

00:17:31.220 be institutional racism under particular contexts in certain times if you can show the evidence for

00:17:38.140 that then that was something we went in um being open to finding you know we we didn't go in with

00:17:44.420 preconceived conclusions well we'll maybe get to that later on in terms of the reaction to the

00:17:50.000 report on what people have said. But on the disparities in outcome, I think the one thing

00:17:56.460 that a lot of people feel very passionately about, including friends of ours, you know, we have

00:18:00.940 black friends of ours, guys, obviously, usually, who say, well, look, you know, I'm not into this

00:18:06.460 whole victimhood mentality. But when I was a kid, by the time I was 18, I'd been like stopped and

00:18:12.360 surged 20 times by the police so in terms of policing and the disparities that do exist there

00:18:20.940 what are the driving factors that you identified for why some of these things happen that way

00:18:27.300 yeah and that is true we did find a massive disparity uh particularly in relation to stop

00:18:34.160 and search and there was a lot of factors that were kind of driving those you can never obviously

00:18:42.600 really determine why is you know a particular office you know you we have biases don't we all

00:18:50.580 of us so not me yeah so so you know we with that face and that voice no one's gonna believe that

00:18:58.120 um we we can't say you know that perhaps biases are or aren't driving those things they probably

00:19:07.560 are they drive everything you know um but having said that we can go off the evidence we have and

00:19:13.640 try and kind of look at what's going on there and something we found because um ethnic minorities

00:19:19.620 are massively disproportionately um more likely to live in deprived neighborhoods and those

00:19:25.680 deprived neighbourhoods are more likely to be heavily policed right and so because there's more

00:19:31.740 crime yeah exactly and so when you start looking at factors like those you know the conditions the

00:19:38.900 context then some of it starts making sense and it becomes evident that actually you know you can

00:19:46.260 actually explain why it is they're more likely to be stopped and such and also for example ethnic

00:19:51.880 minority population is younger so we found that kind of drives again why is that there's more 0.98

00:19:59.700 a disproportionate number of younger black people for instance would be more likely to stop and

00:20:05.320 search so yes you know we can't pin down exactly why that is but what I would say I mean one of 0.51

00:20:12.200 our findings was that for every one young white kid killed 24 black kids are killed and that's 0.55

00:20:22.200 between 16 to 25 when you have a disparity that stark in terms of likelihood of being murdered

00:20:30.100 I don't think demonizing the police or saying we should have less policing is the answer whatsoever

00:20:37.520 you should have more effective policing sure but this knee-jerk reaction of oh it's a problem with

00:20:44.500 policing you can't you know blame policing on the fact that uh you know for every one white

00:20:51.320 victim of homicide a young young victim there's 24 black victims so you know can you really blame

00:20:58.440 institutional racism on that either so again we have to have these conversations about why it is

00:21:06.220 that that's taking place and yes it involves you know sometimes making perhaps awkward and

00:21:13.540 uncomfortable hypotheses relating to family and culture and all that kind of thing and nobody

00:21:19.220 wants to go there um mercy let me just jump in there because i just want to get to the end of

00:21:24.360 this so let me make the best possible case i can for the existence of institutional racism in the

00:21:29.780 way that you framed it so you say that the reason that uh this is happening is that uh people from

00:21:35.840 ethnic minority backgrounds live in deprived areas much more than white people and as a result

00:21:41.660 there's more crime as a result there's more policing as a result there's more interaction

00:21:45.140 etc right but isn't that what people mean when they say institutional racism that but essentially

00:21:51.620 minority populations are growing up in areas where they have bad schools bad you know social 1.00

00:21:58.780 organization bad access to activities for children that they can't go out and play or whatever and

00:22:05.540 as a result of that there's more crime and therefore it's the poverty that they end up

00:22:09.760 growing up in that's causing all this other stuff later in life. I think that's why we have to be

00:22:15.400 clear what we mean by institutional racism because you know I would suspect maybe many

00:22:21.180 people would describe what you're describing that phenomenon as institutional racism but

00:22:27.480 we have to remember the racism part of that argument that what you're describing yes that

00:22:33.580 is institutional it's institutional something um but we have to remember that racism is a very

00:22:40.280 serious thing you know it's it has to be happening because of somebody's race if you're

00:22:46.300 going to use that racism word um and what we see in the data um is that race is not a good

00:22:56.920 you know explanatory factor for why things happen the way they do um what do you mean

00:23:03.120 But when you say the evidence isn't showing that, for example, if you look at Indians versus Pakistani and Bangladeshi, if you look at black African versus black Caribbean, race is not a good determiner for how what outcomes your life will have.

00:23:20.040 that's what the data shows it's all these other factors and so you know outcomes are so fragmented

00:23:26.460 and so all over the place some groups and you know subgroups are doing so well some are doing

00:23:31.860 really poorly even if they're the same race that's why this racism argument begins to kind of break

00:23:39.300 down quite quickly do pockets of you know racism exist in particular neighborhoods and things like

00:23:46.640 that i'm sure they do but i think once we start uh kind of unpicking that so you know for example

00:23:53.220 you said about living in deprivation poor access to particular institutions and services okay well

00:24:00.820 let's tackle that let's find out why it is that they have that poor access let's um you know come

00:24:06.640 up with policies to help them out of poverty you know that that kind of that's where the

00:24:11.440 conversation should be and once you say well it's institutional racism so the system itself you know

00:24:18.160 is out to get ethnic minorities or black people then you know you can't go much further than that 0.98

00:24:25.780 the conversation should be okay well if they're disproportionately more likely to live in poor

00:24:29.980 neighborhoods what can we do about that how can we empower them to make sure their prospects are

00:24:35.500 better. And that's why it is important that things, for example, take employment and wage

00:24:43.820 gaps. Wage gaps at its lowest for a decade at 2.3% between ethnic minorities and the white

00:24:51.380 British population. For under 30s, there's no statistically significant wage gap, which I'm

00:24:57.580 sure everybody would welcome. Again, ethnic minorities, we commissioned research, as I said

00:25:05.100 earlier um and into education and social mobility and ethnicity and things like that and ethnic

00:25:12.340 minority kids you know control for every factor and they're still more likely to outperform their

00:25:18.100 white british counterparts these are things we should be celebrating and actually these are the

00:25:22.480 things that are going to then impact um wealth in the future of ethnic minorities so let's kind of

00:25:29.440 you know carry those things on and i think that's the way the conversation should go

00:25:34.300 what what can we identify that can kind of have a tangible impact on people's lives because

00:25:39.960 ultimately it is as much as we like to talk about kind of philosophical sociological concepts when

00:25:46.880 we're talking about race um like systemic racism white privilege all those things you know most

00:25:53.340 everybody's living their life in a very tangible way and the you know the poorest people and the

00:25:59.620 most deprived people care about putting food on the table you know they care about their job and

00:26:05.620 you know they care about their health and things like that so we should be having conversations

00:26:11.140 in that space about actual tangible issues really not like you know white privilege

00:26:17.820 systemic racism, etc.

00:26:47.820 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

00:26:52.940 Hey, Francis, do you like to keep your online activity private?

00:26:57.580 Yes, um, I mean, sure.

00:26:59.360 Think about everything you've ever browsed, searched for, watched, or tweeted.

00:27:03.160 Now imagine all of that data is being crawled through,

00:27:06.060 collected, and aggregated by third parties into a permanent public record. 0.96

00:27:10.680 I'm f***ed. 0.98

00:27:11.900 You are. 0.98

00:27:12.900 Trigonometry is now going to be a solo project.

00:27:15.080 There are hundreds of data brokers out there whose sole business is to buy and sell your data.

00:27:21.420 That's why I use ExpressVPN.

00:27:23.840 With ExpressVPN, my connection gets routed through an encrypted server and my IP address is masked.

00:27:30.120 My career is over.

00:27:31.680 Enough about the good news.

00:27:33.060 Every time I turn ExpressVPN on, I'm given a random IP address shared by other ExpressVPN customers.

00:27:39.080 That makes it more difficult for third parties to identify me or harvest my data.

00:27:45.080 I'm finished. I'm absolutely done for.

00:27:47.720 And the best part is how easy it is to use.

00:27:49.960 No matter what device you're on, phone, laptop, or smart TV,

00:27:53.900 all you have to do is tap one button to get protected.

00:27:57.540 Come on, Francis, you can do the last bit.

00:27:59.400 Come on, let's do this.

00:28:00.740 If you don't want to end up like me,

00:28:02.840 go to expressvpn.com slash trigger and get three extra months for free.

00:28:09.300 That's expressvpn.com slash trigger.

00:28:13.540 Go to expressvpn.com slash trigger to learn more.

00:28:24.460 It's a very good point.

00:28:25.880 Now, we were talking about tangible issues.

00:28:28.000 You mentioned that horrifying statistic.

00:28:30.240 If you could repeat it again about black boys more likely to be murdered than white boys? 0.87

00:28:34.780 Yeah, so for every one young white victim of homicide, there's 24 black victims. 0.92

00:28:41.620 why i mean i still just take a moment to think about that that is crazy isn't it

00:28:47.640 yeah absolutely i think that was one of the most shocking things that is shocking for me

00:28:51.900 why is that exactly is what i would say um is it institutional racism i mean i would like

00:29:02.340 somebody to make a compelling case for why that would be institutional race and i'm sure somebody

00:29:08.120 very much good I'm sure somebody might write an essay in the YouTube comments about why that is

00:29:14.500 institutional racism but we need to understand why how you know culture family in people's

00:29:25.140 environment mental health all those things how they feed into something like that and to produce

00:29:32.120 such a stark disparity um i mean we we didn't kind of do a deep dive into why that particular

00:29:41.420 statistic is is the way it is but judging from kind of all our other evidence it is being driven

00:29:50.160 by again probably deprivation family stability all these kinds of things we just we don't know

00:29:56.460 because we don't ask these questions we're too busy arguing about white privilege half the time

00:30:00.960 um so we don't know why what really why that's the case it's it's shocking and it should be a

00:30:09.920 national scandal um but all the kind of publicity that things relating to race um and disadvantage

00:30:19.940 get are just so confined to this these all these sociological concepts and not you know why the

00:30:26.540 cast so many you know black kids dying on the street um and also why they're disproportionately

00:30:32.900 more likely to do the killing as well so why is that you know we don't we don't have those

00:30:37.500 conversations and those are really conversations we need to be having the thing that i found very

00:30:42.180 very upsetting in the report when i was reading it was when they were talking about gangs and they

00:30:47.940 were saying that they became a surrogate family that these people these boys predominantly girls

00:30:54.420 as well but boys predominantly are looking for family in all the wrong places yeah absolutely

00:31:00.200 and i mean there's a whole another conversation to be had on kind of father figures and a sense

00:31:07.820 of brotherhood that that young men in particular i i think are lacking generally in society um

00:31:14.260 so it's not surprising when somebody's you know a kid has grown up without um a father in their

00:31:23.600 life. They live in a poor neighbourhood. They are more likely to be stopped and searched. They don't

00:31:31.320 really trust the police. They hear a narrative that society is racist. Of course, they're going

00:31:36.900 to find, you know, a sense of family somewhere else, right? Because we're only human. That's

00:31:44.660 the most basic kind of human instinct. And often, unfortunately, there are people who exploit that

00:31:53.580 and that is why we have a kind of county lines crisis

00:31:57.760 and that's why so many young kids have been recruited into these gangs

00:32:02.760 because, you know, people see that opportunity for young kids

00:32:07.960 don't really have, you know, they're not really optimistic

00:32:12.120 about their prospects in life, they look around,

00:32:14.820 there's not much to aspire to.

00:32:17.580 So, of course, they're going to kind of look to make money quickly,

00:32:21.380 first of all and that's where a lot of it does come from um and they're gonna you know get into

00:32:27.180 the wrong crowds essentially so again this issue of fatherlessness and uh is there's lots of data

00:32:35.580 particularly in america in american studies to show the massive effects that fatherlessness

00:32:40.800 has whether it's in outcomes where in relation to education just criminality all that kind of thing

00:32:48.160 So I think it's very disingenuous when people say, oh, you're just trying to blame single mothers and then they don't want to have the conversation.

00:32:57.060 Why don't we want to have this conversation, Marcie? Because it seems to me it's a very important and necessary conversation to have.

00:33:03.380 When I worked in Newham, you know, you could see particularly the boys that struggled with, you know, with their education,

00:33:11.660 but also with the structure of the school day, getting into school, doing the homework.

00:33:15.760 And a lot of the time, it's because they didn't have a stable family background.

00:33:20.140 Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:22.200 I don't know why we're not talking about it.

00:33:25.120 I can guess it's because anything that seems to demonise, firstly, poor people,

00:33:33.700 black people, black women, it's almost like all the taboo things 1.00

00:33:40.360 that you shouldn't be talking about, 0.89

00:33:41.820 or people you shouldn't be demonising in society, 0.94

00:33:45.440 poor black mothers you know so I think part of it comes from that um part of it comes from 0.97

00:33:52.640 you know I hate to say it because this is another can of worms but you know some strands of um 0.97

00:33:58.680 kind of feminism and this this demonization of um you know masculinity we masculinity and 1.00

00:34:07.740 the demonization of two parent families or we we're kind of looking down upon people who think

00:34:14.680 that growing up in a stable two-parent household is the best set up for a child.

00:34:20.460 You know, that's, you know, a lot of the, I hate to say it, the woke liberals.

00:34:27.160 You know, they think once you start talking about stable two-parent families,

00:34:31.960 they roll their eyes, all conservatives, you know, 1.00

00:34:35.060 they just think it's some right-wing garbage. 0.98

00:34:37.600 Do you think that in our desire to progress socially, 0.89

00:34:40.840 we've just maybe sort of we the train is now running downhill without any brakes on like

00:34:46.540 we are so keen to be progressive yeah that we sort of forgot some of the things that got humanity

00:34:51.660 through the last 30 000 years to where we are now yeah i think which one of the reasons i'm a

00:34:59.120 conservative is for that very reason because i think you know change is done best when it's done

00:35:05.840 slowly because society is so delicate it's such a delicate thing it's like a delicate organism that

00:35:13.080 you know then it requires so many tiny parts working correctly at the same time many of which

00:35:19.920 are just really complicated social relations they require stability so and i think we're trying to

00:35:28.260 undo that really quickly we're kind of almost experimenting um uh we've kind of using society

00:35:34.800 is a lab rat or something and we're just trying to change structures and um criticizing structures

00:35:42.520 that have been in place for you know for as long as humans have been alive and we're just trying

00:35:48.840 to break those down really quickly in the name of being progressive and yes i think that breakdown

00:35:56.120 is you know we're doing that at our peril i think it's it's a very very interesting point and we'd

00:36:03.560 You know, we're talking about the breakdown of society.

00:36:05.880 But also, one of the things that I found quite shocking was the lack of faith,

00:36:12.200 particularly from the black Caribbean community, in the institutions, particularly the police.

00:36:18.020 And if that's the case, if there is this suspicion, then how are we going to move forward as a society?

00:36:23.260 How are we going to progress?

00:36:24.960 Because unless you have faith in institutions and the people who are meant to support you,

00:36:31.080 we're never going to find any form of cohesion, are we?

00:36:34.800 Yeah, so trust was something we very much identified

00:36:38.200 in the report as something that's a massive barrier.

00:36:44.240 Again, we found different levels of trust,

00:36:46.540 particularly in policing.

00:36:48.580 We found not all ethnic minority groups

00:36:51.980 massively mistrust the police and institutions in general.

00:36:56.220 but you know lack of trust among black caribbean population for instance is pretty high and that's

00:37:04.340 why one of our recommendations actually we had a few recommendations that were trying to touch on

00:37:09.100 that issue is to have more collaborative kind of working between police and local communities

00:37:16.920 one was introducing a local residency requirement for police forces which some police forces are

00:37:23.680 doing just to get a sense that the people policing you are working with you and are kind of drawn

00:37:31.280 from the community um and more scrutiny of you know stop and search um sort of policy and uh

00:37:41.200 video footage uh body cam footage uh setting up these community uh groups to provide kind of

00:37:49.460 a scrutiny uh for the local police forces made up of kind of uh panels panel members from the

00:37:56.580 local community you know all those so there are ways you can start kind of building trust between

00:38:01.900 local communities and police in particular um it's not it's a massive mountain to climb because

00:38:09.180 there are these issues of there is the legacy of racism it's something i would say particularly

00:38:16.560 amongst the black Caribbean population um who who feel it very strongly you know because of their

00:38:26.380 experiences particularly kind of from the 50s onwards of living in Britain in a way that me

00:38:31.980 as a an immigrant wouldn't um so I think it's a massive hill to climb and I think it's a really 1.00

00:38:39.440 important one. But again, we should be talking about how we do that, rather than just kind of

00:38:48.920 saying, oh, well, institution race, it can't be solved. It's the system. That's the problem. 0.68

00:38:53.000 Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you how much of this is about history, because as you rightly say,

00:38:57.440 particularly the black Caribbean community did experience a lot of racism and not just racism,

00:39:02.600 but actually overt discrimination as well. And those two things aren't necessarily the same,

00:39:07.280 both very bad right so how much of this is just maybe people quite rightly being like well we've

00:39:15.060 had to suppress all of our feelings about this for a long time you know i have a friend who who's from

00:39:21.400 that background and he talks about the stuff his parents experienced and then and when he experienced

00:39:27.760 that they'll be like yeah just ignore it whereas really people shouldn't have to ignore that and so

00:39:32.240 all of this spilling out that we've seen recently is maybe just a delayed but just reaction to

00:39:38.380 some of the things that went on before any of our time yeah and I think I would buy that more if it

00:39:44.840 was the older generation driving this kind of movement and actually what you see in polls

00:39:51.320 when you ask people has racism gotten worse is Britain a racist country those kinds of questions

00:39:56.720 there's a massive generational divide and it's always the younger people who are saying racism

00:40:04.040 has gotten worse you know it's the younger people who've never had it so good and that is the truth 1.00

00:40:08.880 we have to be honest um you know young ethnic minority people growing up in britain today

00:40:15.580 there's never been a single point in history um where ethnic minority people have had it so good

00:40:21.940 And not only that, because I know people like to say, oh, well, there's no point comparing, it's still bad, even if it's not as bad as before, that doesn't matter if it's still bad.

00:40:32.120 But it's not, you know, the data shows that ethnic minority young people do really well, you know, broadly speaking, just objectively, not even comparatively, just objectively.

00:40:45.380 And yet they're more likely to have this mistrust and think Britain's racist.

00:40:51.380 Why is that, Mercy? Why is that happening?

00:40:53.700 I think they're being fed a lot of misinformation.

00:41:01.280 And, you know, young people have this kind of revolutionary spirit, don't they?

00:41:06.180 They think they're going to change the world and they want to fight the system.

00:41:09.460 I think part of it...

00:41:11.200 Then you get old like us and you realise there's nothing you can do.

00:41:14.320 Yeah, exactly. Just become the system.

00:41:17.460 Just take over.

00:41:18.520 Yeah. So I think part of it is just, you know, fight the system kind of stuff.

00:41:25.680 And obviously a lot of young people are massively more likely to be on the left and have that kind of Marxist analysis of everything.

00:41:36.600 So I think part of it is that.

00:41:38.760 But also, I just think we haven't been frank enough about, or voices who have sought to talk about how well ethnic minorities are doing have been crowded out, I think, by people who want to talk about how racist Britain is.

00:41:56.740 and that's why you know this is the first report really that has focused on those successes um

00:42:02.800 where they exist it said okay yeah things are there's there's a lot of work still to do

00:42:08.540 but look things are actually really good in a lot of areas and um I think we need more of that

00:42:15.280 because you know if you if you're growing up thinking you're living in a racist country and

00:42:21.780 your prospects are kind of going to be bad at every point in life, education, employment,

00:42:29.100 then of course that has a kind of psychological effect. And we need to kind of combat that

00:42:34.440 because it isn't doing a disservice to young people, I think.

00:42:38.780 I mean, it's a very, very good point. But then there are instances where you see the government

00:42:42.780 shoot themselves in the foot. The classic example is Windrush, you know, in the entire fiasco at the 1.00

00:42:49.440 home office and you think why couldn't this be sorted out why am I picking up the paper and

00:42:54.640 seeing you know I can't remember the exact details of certain cases but you hear people

00:42:58.500 who've been in this country for 50 60 years and you know they're at risk of deportation

00:43:03.580 yeah I mean honestly I'm glad I'm not a member of the government

00:43:07.980 they don't help themselves I mean the commission was independent right so you know we weren't

00:43:18.260 going off what the government wanted they obviously the government commissioned the um

00:43:23.480 the commission but i i think the government particularly the conservatives and i say this as

00:43:31.420 a conservative we have got it wrong you know we've got it wrong sometimes and uh i think um

00:43:41.000 it's great to see that they were compensated but can you really compensate somebody you know for

00:43:46.360 for being treated that way there's no kind of justification for it whatsoever and yeah I think

00:43:55.140 successive governments have really let let themselves down on the race question in different

00:44:01.520 ways but again I think it's a good opportunity I think almost this commission will report for

00:44:09.840 the conservatives to make amends almost and say actually we're taking this issue really seriously

00:44:15.420 We care about ethnic disparities and we want to solve the issues that are still at play.

00:44:23.400 Let's talk a little bit about the reaction because some of the things you've talked about and a lot of other things that I never heard in the media that I thought were very important.

00:44:32.760 For example, maybe we should mention it briefly, the health side of things.

00:44:35.920 One of the big narratives that came out in the last 12 months is, well, ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of institutional racism and the health care system is institutionally racist, etc.

00:44:50.020 The report actually showed that the disparity in mortality was largely down to the sort of jobs that people did, where they lived, the number of people per household, which tends to be high, all that sort of thing.

00:45:01.900 And actually, ethnic minorities in this country tend to live longer and survive major diseases better.

00:45:08.820 But none of that, or the ratio of black kids killed versus white kids, none of that was in any of the media coverage that we saw.

00:45:18.280 I don't think most people in this country even are aware that there's any disparity between the homicide rate for different groups.

00:45:26.540 Why is that?

00:45:28.120 Well, because it doesn't make for sexy headlines, I guess.

00:45:31.480 You don't think so? You don't think black kids are 25 times more likely to die? 0.98

00:45:36.020 Well, I mean, what doesn't, when we've said things in this report.

00:45:41.180 Ethnic wage gap eliminated. You don't think that makes a great headline?

00:45:44.460 I mean, it does make you wonder, you know, suspicious of the media.

00:45:48.400 I think we all have our theories about why it is the media too much reporting.

00:45:52.020 I have a theory, I can tell you.

00:45:52.900 Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, again, with the COVID thing, it is all these other factors. I don't care about, you know, feelings. I care about facts. I mean, that's a crude way to put it in.

00:46:10.000 She wants to be the Black Ben Shapiro. 0.59

00:46:10.840 thank god no but no honestly i mean obviously i care i'm a compassionate person right let's

00:46:18.620 let's get that out of the way but when it comes to looking at why things are taking place i care

00:46:24.060 about what we could show in the data um i'm you know i have a social policy background and i care

00:46:31.780 about analyzing things properly um so yes there are all those other factors um at play and that's

00:46:39.860 not to excuse them i mean it's it's not just because yes you can explain away disparities

00:46:45.660 by for example controlling for um income and then you say oh well it's because they earn less

00:46:52.640 that's not to say that's okay we don't want these disparities to exist so yes all those things are

00:46:59.680 a problem um some of them are choice and some of them are cultural like intergenerational households

00:47:06.360 but this is why jumping straight to kind of institutional racism

00:47:13.480 doesn't really help and I would hope that even though

00:47:20.020 the kind of response to the report has been a massive letdown.

00:47:25.680 Have you been surprised at the response or did you expect this?

00:47:29.240 I expected it because I've been on social media

00:47:34.380 and kind of active in this kind of space for you know a couple of years and I I've seen

00:47:39.900 how people respond to these kinds of things when you challenge their assertions assumptions

00:47:46.980 um there was a lot of personal stuff I think you know a lot of the other commissioners I was the

00:47:54.860 youngest commissioner others aren't probably as active on social media and they just haven't

00:48:00.200 experience the level of vitriol that goes on on social media so it was hard for them and you know

00:48:06.740 when you have an elected member of parliament you know comparing the chair of the commission

00:48:13.220 tony seoul to the kkk i mean effectively who did that uh clive lewis uh he he he tweeted a picture

00:48:21.180 of a kkk member um in response to the report so and then i'm not an expert on the kkk i don't

00:48:28.760 I don't think they did reports, I don't know.

00:48:31.640 And had a notoriously small black membership as well, yeah.

00:48:36.480 Yeah, he compared the, so it was actually,

00:48:41.520 it was an academic at Cambridge compared Tony Saul

00:48:44.840 to Goebbels, Goebbels, is that how you pronounce his name?

00:48:48.300 Goebbels, Goebbels, that's the one.

00:48:50.780 A Nazi, she compared him to a Nazi

00:48:53.280 and Clive Lewis, I think, said the commission was the KKK.

00:48:56.540 OK, so that's the kind of intellectual.

00:48:59.000 That's the sort of mature debate you want about this issue.

00:49:01.060 Yeah, so that kind of thing.

00:49:03.640 Some of it you can laugh off, but others have been really personal

00:49:08.140 and just vitriolic, and I'm still yet to hear anybody actually explain

00:49:14.240 what it is about the report, the data, what data they disagree with

00:49:19.420 or what recommendations they don't like, the people making all these comments.

00:49:24.100 so yeah that that's the kind of where we're at unfortunately people aren't really trying to

00:49:29.620 talk about the substance of these issues but that's the real problem isn't it in that we're

00:49:33.980 not having a discussion it's it's all well and good be critical of the report but at least do

00:49:39.460 the reading and go i disagree with this point this point this point and these are my reasons why

00:49:44.620 and what i worry about mercy is that if we can't have the discussions we're never going to move

00:49:49.140 forward are we? No we're not unfortunately because a lot of these issues are really difficult

00:49:57.060 complicated social issues that require you know in areas like health when you identify

00:50:04.560 a particular disparity that's perhaps can be relatively easily resolved by lifestyle changes

00:50:12.620 for example like obesity disparity then it's clear what the kind of solution for that would be

00:50:19.480 but that's not the nature of a lot of these issues we're talking about they're really

00:50:23.600 complex cultural social issues and it requires people to actually sit down and have difficult

00:50:32.480 conversations and the climate isn't right for that because you know everybody knows now that

00:50:40.000 as soon as somebody disagrees with you, they'll call you a racist

00:50:43.300 or, you know, a homophobe, or they'll just throw around kind of isms.

00:50:50.120 So people are actually scared to have these conversations, you know,

00:50:53.420 and actually we need white people on board almost in this conversation.

00:51:01.640 We're with you, Mercy.

00:51:04.020 You've got two white people with you.

00:51:06.120 I mean, let's not forget that, I mean, the last census was obviously 10 years ago, and we don't have the latest census data. We won't have that for a while. But, you know, roughly 86% of the country is white. And I feel that's a really big group of people to be kind of excluding from the conversation, right? When it actually requires a kind of almost national effort, national conversation. 0.85

00:51:29.780 and so many white people um I speak to and I I see on social media they say well I I don't know

00:51:38.260 what to say I I'm scared I'll I'll say something wrong and then I'll be called racist and then

00:51:42.960 you know I'll be counselled essentially lose my job you know that that is a reality for a lot of

00:51:47.880 people these days they'll say something against BLM and then they'll lose their job um so part

00:51:55.060 of the problem is the climate of discourse um at the moment which is really just not conducive to

00:52:02.520 people having open and frank conversations about difficult social issues why is it that it seems

00:52:08.560 that people who are on the right and are far more amenable to have these conversations but people on

00:52:15.460 the left i mean they don't have them and if they start to have them this is what happens we descend

00:52:21.440 into epithet hurling yeah I cannot speak for those sorts of people because I'm still trying

00:52:30.320 to understand them myself I think we've seen there's a lot of people on the left that just

00:52:38.720 are so wedded to this structural racism idea that they almost can't see beyond that in a way

00:52:50.860 um because as soon as you you know challenge some of their long-held assertions with evidence

00:52:59.840 all they see is you're denying you know their reality their truth almost um and that's so it

00:53:10.180 almost feels so personal to a lot of these people and I think we were able to take quite a

00:53:15.660 dispassionate approach, I guess, to when we were doing this report

00:53:20.020 because unlike a lot of other commissions,

00:53:24.680 none of the commissioners have some kind of vested interest

00:53:27.720 in kind of race per se.

00:53:31.680 We're not from the, we weren't from the race lobby.

00:53:36.720 Is that what it is, Mercy?

00:53:38.580 You mentioned the word the race relations industry.

00:53:41.600 Do you think there's just, and I'm just going to put it as crudely

00:53:44.980 as it needs to be there's just a small number of people who've realized this is a way for them to

00:53:50.160 make a career to go on tv and to bang on about this issue and to ignore everyone else to shout

00:53:55.620 i've i've had this experience of being on tv myself where you just get shouted over by someone

00:53:59.960 who's just spewing emotion and there's no facts no data no rationality at all but they've got a

00:54:06.560 great career and so they don't care if they drive society off a cliff as long as they benefit do

00:54:11.640 Do you think that there's an element of that?

00:54:12.920 Yeah. I mean, personally, I find it difficult to trust the opinion of somebody whose entire career depends on, you know, maintaining a belief that Britain is racist.

00:54:27.740 You just have to look at Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, who makes a fortune.

00:54:35.040 um biggest racket in the history of mankind um makes a fortune um you know doing these

00:54:43.800 like diversity training and all that kind of thing do i really quit an hour mate we should

00:54:49.800 get on that what yeah yeah honestly it's a you know when you're when that's your reality are

00:54:57.380 you really going to start saying actually there's this piece of data that is really contradicting

00:55:01.240 what I've been saying um so I tend not to trust people who you know have such a vested interest

00:55:08.580 in that that that one belief that they hold kind of never being challenged so but it always seems

00:55:17.500 to me as well that they never seem to put up any any real data or any real stats and if that's the

00:55:24.060 case then how do how do you have a legitimate voice in the conversation I mean you can't when

00:55:30.620 somebody uh they so i feel like i have heard people use data which is often outdated and

00:55:40.500 often doesn't really account for the full you know the the full picture so they'll you know

00:55:45.440 anybody can use any piece of data that is you know accurate piece of data to maintain you know

00:55:52.380 maintain any position they hold um which is why when you have something like what we've done in

00:56:00.400 the commission that says you know i don't know if you guys have looked through the thing but it's

00:56:05.440 very heavy on a lot of data um when you have something like that that can lay out all the

00:56:11.900 data and you know we we spoke to um the authors of the other big race uh reviews that have been

00:56:19.900 done baroness mcgreg smith race in the workplace review david lambing you know we engaged with we

00:56:25.860 try to engage well given limitations particularly time limitations with all the data there is out

00:56:31.800 there we received over 2,300 responses from the public individuals organizations obviously those

00:56:40.040 were you know painstakingly gone through by the people working behind the scenes and you know we

00:56:47.260 were really just trying to take a dispassionate evidence-led approach to this and that is why

00:56:54.340 there are things in there that we welcomed and particularly on like the successes of ethnic

00:57:00.880 minorities and things in there that yes are do echo what a lot of these people say um stop and

00:57:07.800 search statistics um black deaths of black mothers during childbirth those are things people are often

00:57:15.640 using as statistics um for proving that institution racism and we put those in there because that's

00:57:21.520 the data and yes we acknowledge those exist but that's not the full picture i think was our point

00:57:26.660 um so i don't think we can be accused of uh not um having taken an evidence-led approach and this

00:57:34.520 this one thing that i've noticed is is part of the problem as well that with social media you

00:57:41.020 get members of the public and they've got you know access to a public platform and they have

00:57:45.580 these discussions and they don't really know what these terms mean they don't really know

00:57:51.160 the concept so you know in the same week that the report was released they I don't know if you saw

00:57:56.980 this clip uh David Lammy was presenting LBC and this woman rang up and she was saying to him you're

00:58:02.300 not English because you've you know Caribbean heritage right okay and people then saw then

00:58:08.060 equated the two well how can structural racism not be happening if this you know if David Lammy had 0.97

00:58:15.800 an unpleasant idiot calling them up yeah yeah exactly and what happens is yes nobody's denying 0.99

00:58:23.340 there's racism that racism happens you know be it would be as intelligent as denying murder 1.00

00:58:30.500 happens you know because terrible things happen and humans are humans right we're not all perfect

00:58:37.480 and um you know some of us are absolute you know bleeps so you could have just said it

00:58:45.660 No, you could have not looked at me.

00:58:50.040 They all look at you when they want to make a negative comparison.

00:58:53.300 So, of course, racism happens.

00:58:55.920 And, you know, that late, I did see that clip.

00:58:57.760 And, you know, if somebody tried to tell me I wasn't English,

00:59:01.320 I'd definitely be using full swear words, that's for sure.

00:59:05.260 Because, you know, I know you've been on TV

00:59:08.200 and you were saying you weren't English.

00:59:10.260 Was it Addy or Ray?

00:59:11.260 And, you know, he had an issue with that.

00:59:13.500 it's just like can we just accept people can identify how they want to and you know i would

00:59:19.220 i could be a woman but i can't be not english i'm not allowed to do that

00:59:22.700 yeah that's how that works um yeah people should be you know i think people have

00:59:30.080 perhaps people confuse this idea of national identity with kind of ethnic identity almost and

00:59:37.140 I suppose some terms like British and English, they can be both ethnicities and national identities.

00:59:46.640 So people have an issue there.

00:59:49.280 I mean, obviously, I would never claim to be ethnically English, whatever that is, because even that's contested, right?

00:59:56.020 English being an ethnicity per se, it's made up of, you know.

01:00:00.300 But nobody can tell me I'm not, my identity is in English, so to speak.

01:00:05.980 So there is a lot of kind of misunderstanding of concepts and I think that characterises a lot of this debate.

01:00:16.260 There's a lack of clarity as well around what people mean when they say these things.

01:00:22.040 Systemic racism, structural racism, institutional racism used kind of interchangeably often.

01:00:28.800 Do they mean the same thing?

01:00:30.400 I mean, did the people who use them know whether they're referring to the same phenomenon when they're using them?

01:00:35.980 I mean, so all those things, I feel like people are kind of left

01:00:41.080 to define what they mean by racism, and that's part of the problem.

01:00:45.320 We've just, we don't really know what racism is anymore,

01:00:48.600 so we can apply it as a blanket explanation for it.

01:00:52.040 It's been very much diluted, I think, the term racism.

01:00:55.480 Yeah, the language has evolved, to say the least.

01:00:58.880 Let me put one final point to you in the sort of spirit of playing devil's advocate

01:01:03.120 before we go to our last question.

01:01:04.640 One of the accusations that was made about the people who were involved, like yourself, in preparing the report was that while ethnically you're all very diverse, actually a lot of the people who were involved already thought there's no such thing as institutional racism.

01:01:21.600 Well, they're all sort of quote-unquote conservatives you are.

01:01:25.160 I don't know about Tony, but I don't know if he's conservative, but he certainly, you know, he's not a woke leftist, let's put it that way, right?

01:01:31.840 And so the argument was, well, all these people who thought institutional racism didn't exist found it didn't exist. Surprise.

01:01:39.880 Yeah, I mean, I can see that. But I think the people on the commission, I mean, I felt like I was out of my depth almost because these are people with decades and decades of experience, you know, on the ground doing actual stuff.

01:01:56.700 we've got you know um he he did um leave in uh december where he served the full original term

01:02:04.740 um one of the commissioners um dr ajai karka lord ajai karka so um he's got pretty much every kind

01:02:13.900 of medical accolade you can um think of as professor of surgery or something like that

01:02:21.040 at the ucl we have a space scientist for god's sake um we had several um people with phds i think

01:02:28.380 probably the majority did a global economist um you know these are people who care about data you

01:02:36.340 know they have not gotten to where they were because they were putting ideology um before

01:02:41.760 data um these are people who not only have um on the ground experience of doing actual you know

01:02:49.820 practical work um in lots of areas and tony for example has been helping young ethnic minority

01:02:59.000 people for for decades in education so what i would say to those people is just look at the

01:03:07.580 cvs of everybody who was on there and then try and ask yourself whether they got there by kind

01:03:15.020 of putting ideology on race ahead of everything else

01:03:18.180 or they got there actually because they're just very good

01:03:22.180 at what they do and they care about statistics

01:03:24.180 and they care about data and they care about facts and truth.

01:03:28.320 I don't think they're going to do that.

01:03:30.000 I'm going to be honest with you.

01:03:33.240 I don't know why.

01:03:34.420 Call me a cynic, mercy.

01:03:35.520 So something that actually happened was the British Medical Journal,

01:03:39.760 they published a response saying, oh, there was nobody

01:03:43.820 with any health background on the commission.

01:03:48.740 When we have a literal professor of surgery or something

01:03:52.060 and we have a literal space scientist,

01:03:55.920 there's been a lot of stuff trying to undermine

01:03:59.420 the kind of expertise of people on there.

01:04:04.060 You know, Dr. Dan B. Samoyo, for example,

01:04:07.300 she's worked for just about every,

01:04:10.480 worked for and with just about every major bank and she's you know she's a global economist like

01:04:17.380 a world-renowned global economist author and there seems to be kind of um there's been a lot

01:04:25.680 of hateful uh the vitriolic stuff trying to put down um the personal backgrounds professional

01:04:33.320 backgrounds of people involved and i think it's just if anything it's just showing the colors of

01:04:39.260 the people doing that more than anything i think it says more about them than the commissioners to

01:04:44.180 be honest yeah and i would completely agree with you mercy has been a wonderful interview thank you

01:04:49.920 so much for coming on um we always end the conversation with one question which is always

01:04:55.340 what's the one thing we're not talking about but we really should be i i would really say

01:05:01.620 to go back to what I've said is let's talk about you know the role of families the role of fathers

01:05:11.200 in kids lives and just culture in general because that's you know people like David Lammy used to

01:05:20.220 make this point a lot and it's sad that he doesn't really do it anymore there's nobody in the

01:05:31.600 driving a lot of these disparities whether we can do anything to fix it is another issue

01:05:38.860 but you you just can't talk about you know as somebody I grew up in a single parent household

01:05:45.260 and I am a single parent so I've had a first-hand experience of you know not having a father in my

01:05:53.760 life and it's it's an issue that is close to me in a way because I know that if you look at the

01:06:01.240 statistic it derives massively you know absent fathers and strong families is the i would say

01:06:08.420 the most important thing probably just generally in life and for outcomes so i would hope we talk

01:06:15.300 about you know culture and families more and especially in relation to young guys we don't

01:06:21.420 talk about boys anymore it's all about women um so that's that's something i i hope we can talk 0.99

01:06:28.000 about more, but, you know, I'm not going to hold my breath. Well, I mean, you say there's nothing

01:06:32.220 we might not be able to do much about it, but actually, as we all know, the first step to

01:06:36.600 solving something is acknowledging that it exists, right? And that's probably step number one there.

01:06:41.580 But anyway, Mercy, thank you so much for coming on. You breathe out a sigh of relief. It hasn't

01:06:47.540 exactly been the Paxman treatment, but thanks for coming on. Where can people find you online if

01:06:52.940 they want to follow you? Because you may have things in the future that they're interested in.

01:06:56.480 yeah so i'm on we won't tell them exactly what they are but you should definitely follow her

01:07:01.000 because interesting things are watching this space um yeah so twitter is probably the best

01:07:05.220 place to find me uh at my name at mercy maroki mercy thank you so much and thank you for watching

01:07:12.060 we will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one or live stream all of them

01:07:16.940 go out 7 p.m uk time take care and see you soon guys

01:07:26.480 We'll be right back.

01:07:56.480 Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

01:07:59.000 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:08:03.200 Get tickets at Mirbish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - April 11, 2021

＂Our Report Found No Evidence of Widespread Institutional Racism＂ - Mercy Muroki

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript