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These figures are chilling, but they should not be surprising

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Black and ethnic minority people in Britain still face "entrenched" race inequality in many areas, including education and health, accorindg to a review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Dr Hannah Jones, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology gives her opinion.

"These figures are chilling, but they should not be surprising – these are inequalities which have been the case for decades. Increasingly post-referendum people have talked about ‘post-factual’ politics, and that appears to be the case when claims are made that ‘political correctness’ rules (and that racism and other discrimination has therefore ceased). While it has become less acceptable to make openly racist statements than it was in the 1970s, it continues to be the case that society’s structures exclude some people from power and wellbeing, as demonstrated by this report.

"Worryingly, public debate throughout and following the referendum campaign appears to have made more overt racism more acceptable too – partly through re-coupling racism with (post-factual) immigration politics, as we saw from our research this legitimating of race/xenophobic talk by national politics runs from the Go Home van of 2013 and before. This report again demonstrates that racialized minorities do not have advantages over others, but this should not be a surprise to anyone familiar with the facts (deaths in custody, deaths in immigration detention, employment inequities, destitution), rather than the statements of politicians such as Farage, May, or Trump."

For further details please contact Nicola Jones, Media Relations Manager, University of Warwick 07920531221 or N.Jones.1@warwick.ac.uk