TITLE:
What a Shoddy Job: A Critical Review of the 2021 Report of the UK Government on Racial and Ethnic Disparities
AUTHORS:
Ayodeji Bayo Ogunrotifa
KEYWORDS:
Racism, BAME, Racial and Ethnic Disparities, Racialisation, Sewell’s Report
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.4,
April
2,
2022
ABSTRACT: This paper critically reviews the 2021 report of the
UK government on racial and ethnic disparities (which was tagged the “Sewell’s
report”). The Sewell’s commission investigated the current dynamics of racial
and ethnic disparities in the UK in four key areas: education and training;
employment, fairness at work and enterprise; crime and policing; and health. It
reported not only interesting findings and conclusions, but also recommended
series of policy measures under four broad themes: building trust; promoting
fairness; creating agency; and achieving inclusivity. A critical review of the
report revealed a series of fundamental, preliminary, and substantive issues
that undermine the credibility of its findings, conclusion, and
recommendations. These issues, which are constitutional problematic, problem
definition, biased methodology, skewed findings, and inaccurate conclusions,
questioned the substance of the commission’s report, and fostered effective
grounds for critics and oppositions to question the acceptability and
legitimacy of the panel or commission’s
findings, conclusions, and recommendations. These issues largely emanated from the composition of the commissioners, which lacked technical knowledge and social scientific understanding of
racism as a conceptual frame to investigate racial and ethnic disparities,
and thus produced a shoddy report that did not reflect the realities and lives
of Black and other minority ethnic groups in the UK.