🧵What is happening to equalities in the UK?
After a former employee of the @EHRC accused the body of ‘colluding in the denial of institutional racism’, this THREAD recalls a series of warnings that the government appears set on disappearing the matter of structural racism.
After a former employee of the @EHRC accused the body of ‘colluding in the denial of institutional racism’, this THREAD recalls a series of warnings that the government appears set on disappearing the matter of structural racism.
Following the #SewellReport, IRR Director Liz Fekete warned that some of its reccomendations were designed to create a new set of norms about how race and racism are conceptualised and which could make research into structural racism 'virtually impossible' irr.org.uk/article/sewell…
In @BylineTimes, Fekete & @LiamShrivastava highlighted how the government's Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill would limit academic freedom and protect bigotry and hate speech in the name of ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘viewpoint diversity’. bylinetimes.com/2021/08/19/the…
In response to the charge of denying institutional racism, an EHRC spokesperson said, ‘our mandate is to concentrate on eliminating race discrimination through using our powers of compliance, enforcement and litigation’. 1/2
But such enforcement powers were, as we explained in this thread, conspicuously absent when the EHRC found that the government had broken the law through its hostile environment policies. 2/2
https://twitter.com/IRR_News/status/1332351712489779200
The body also said it works ‘through concepts that have legal meaning, rather than concepts which are not defined in law’, but as explained here, an EHRC investigation last year relied on several undefined concepts, none of which are applicable in law.
irr.org.uk/article/when-e…
irr.org.uk/article/when-e…
Alarm bells also rang when the commission appointed David Goodhart, who has opined about the need to understand 'majority grievances,' and claimed that 'white self-interest is not the same thing as racism.'
middleeasteye.net/news/ehrc-uk-r…
middleeasteye.net/news/ehrc-uk-r…
And just this week, @VICEWorldNews revealed that the equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has previously referred to trans women as men, declared that she ‘doesn’t care about colonialism’ and complained of ‘too many inarticulate black people’ in public life.
vice.com/en/article/7kv…
vice.com/en/article/7kv…
With an apparent prioritising of protecting beliefs over protected characteristics, the EHRC’s direction of travel would seem to signal an end to a progressive equalities agenda in this country. irr.org.uk/article/from-c…
@threadreaderapp unroll please
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