Thread by @rakibehsan

Mayor of London @SadiqKhan's @guardian article, framing the impact of COVID-19 as a form of racial injustice, is unhelpful.

#COVID19UK does not "discriminate" as such - but it is having a disproportionate impact under certain economic, social, and health conditions.

THREAD:

% of ethnic group living in London:

Black African: 58.0%
Black Caribbean: 57.9%
Bangladeshi: 49.7%
Indian: 38.4%
Pakistani: 19.9%

8.1% of UK's white British people live in London.

Around 1 in 2 people of Bangladeshi origin live in London (concentrated in East London).

% of ethnic group in urban areas (2011 Census):

Pakistani: 99.1%
Bangladeshi: 98.7%
Black African: 98.2%
Black Caribbean: 97.9%
Arab: 97.5%
Indian: 97.3%
Chinese: 94.2%

White British: 78.2%

21 percentage-point gap between white-British and Pakistani-origin.

Household overcrowding by ethnicity (England: three-year average to 2016/7):

- White British: 2%
- White Irish: 4%
- Indian: 7%
- Chinese: 7%
- Black Caribbean: 8%
- Black African: 15%
- Arab: 15%
- Pakistani: 16%
- Bangladeshi: 30%

England average: 3%

Informative article on different rates of multi-generational living in the UK, between groups.

"70% of white 70+ households do not have younger people living with them, compared to just 20% of South Asian and 50% of Black African or Caribbean households"

metro.co.uk/2020/03/23/gov…

Moving onto underlying health conditions and disparities between different ethnic groups.

"In fact, South Asian people make up just 4% of the total UK population, but account for an estimated 8% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes"

diabetes.co.uk/south-asian/

"We’ve known for more than 50 years that the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) is up to 50 per cent higher in first-generation South Asians than in the white European population in the UK"

There are also notable differences BETWEEN South Asian groups.

bhf.org.uk/informationsup…

% in working-age pop. / % NHS medical staff by ethnicity (March 2019):

Asian: 7.2% / 29.7%
Black: 3.4% / 4.6%

White: 85.6% / 55.6%

Based on these statistics, 1 in 14 members of the working-age population are Asian.

3 in 10 members of NHS medical staff are Asian.

COVID-19 is exposing some very real differences between the UK's ethnic groups - in terms of geography, housing, occupation, health, lifestyle, and culture.

Some factors are beyond the control of any government.

Others require hard-headed debates within local communities.

The country is getting to grips with a global pandemic - arguably its gravest national social crisis in the postwar era.

What it does not need, is the mayor of its capital playing racial identity politics in the middle of it all.

END.