‘The end of BAME’? Neoliberal post-multiculturalism,racism denial and the state

Abstract

‘BAME’ has been used in the UK since the 1990s to denote ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ people. The combination of varied ethnic groups within BAME as a single collective category has proven controversial. This article focuses on the UK state critique of BAME and governmental decision to disuse the acronym announced in 2022. Methodologically, the article uses purposive sampling of key governmental, public sector and civil society sources. These texts are analysed using a processural racial eliminativist interpretive theoretical approach. To start, the neoliberal ‘post-multicultural’ conjuncture from the early 2000s onwards is explicated as the context for the emergent state critique of BAME. Next, the article details criticism of BAME in the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report (2021) and the government’s response, Inclusive Britain (HM Government, 2022), announcing disuse of the acronym. This overview critically establishes the basis for a four-part analysis: evaluating claims that BAME militates against meritocracy and minority ethnic social mobility; examining arguments against BAME as pathologizing some minority ethnic group characteristics and advocating attention to intra-ethnic differences; engaging emergent disparity discourse as displacing discussions of discrimination and ethnic inequality; and assessing claims that racism has diminished significantly in relation to critical insights on racism denial. To conclude, the article argues for retaining a collective minority ethnic category as an administrative and analytical tool to aggregate instances of discrimination, substantiate the existence of racism and inform antiracist practice.

Introduction

The term ‘BAME’ has been used in the UK since the 1990s to denote ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ people, initially alongside its forerunner ‘BME’ (‘Black and minority ethnic’) dating from the 1980s (Saeed et al., 2019). BAME is highly UK-specific (Malik et al., 2021: 51) and used by numerous public, private and third sector organisations. The acronym has served as a key category to ascertain levels of social inclusion as well as prejudice towards and discrimination against individuals and groups with protected characteristics, including race and religion. However, BAME has been viewed sceptically with senior civil servants (Bunglawala, 2019) and major media organizations and outlets such as the BBC and The Guardian expressing unease with the term (BBC, 2021; Mistlin, 2021; Okolosie et al., 2015).

BAME is also regarded as replacing the notion of ‘Black’ or ‘Blackness’ as a political category denoting inter-ethnic solidarity (Gill, 2024). In South Africa, for example, some people officially classified as ‘coloured’ self-identified as ‘Black’ in an anti-racist coalition against the apartheid state (Ahluwalia and Zegeye, 2003). While in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s, some within African, Asian and West Indian migrant communities who had experienced colour-based discrimination adopted ‘political blackness’ to express their political alliance (Sivanandan, 1982). The replacement of political blackness by BAME is also characterised as a bottom-up, grassroots term for pan ethnic solidarity being superseded by the top-down imposition of an administrative term by race relations insiders and academics distanced from the communities being labelled (Saeed et al., 2019). Consequently, categories such as BAME have a significant impact on the individuals and groups they are applied to, with the controversy and debate around BAME largely focused on these identitarian issues and related politics.

This article focuses on the state critique of BAME in the form of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) report and the governmental response in relation to two pairs of questions: First, what is objectionable about BAME? And are the objections valid? Second, what are the conjunctural conditions for this critique and proscription? And what are the wider political implications of accepting the governmental decision? The article begins with contextual exposition of the neoliberal ‘post-multiculturalism’ conjuncture prioritising individualist meritocracy, social mobility and social cohesion over the promotion of distinct cultures and support for antiracism. Next, the article details state criticism of BAME as categorically erroneous, methodologically unreliable and prescriptively problematic.

Objections to BAME presented in the CRED report and the government’s response, Inclusive Britain are then examined in four sections. Section one presents and evaluates the claim that BAME militates against meritocracy and minority ethnic social mobility. Section two discusses how arguments against BAME demonstrate pathological cultural typologies of some minority ethnic groups as well as advocating attention to intra-ethnic differences. Section three engages the rise of disparity discourse as displacing discussions of discrimination and ethnic inequality. Section four assesses claims that racism has diminished significantly in relation to critical insights on racism denial. In conclusion, the article supports the continued use of a collective minority ethnic category as a useful conceptual tool to aggregate and substantiate the existence of racism and inform ameliorative strategies.

Methodologically, the article examines BAME as an analytical concept and category through a critical textual evaluation of purposively sampled documents, mainly the CRED report and Inclusive Britain. There is widespread descriptive use of BAME as a category throughout various academic debates, for example within educational studies. However, in-depth sociological analysis of the BAME concept itself is minimal and largely articulated within social health studies (Aspinall, 2002, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). This means that there is limited extended critical assessment of the broader relationship between the acronym’s conceptual formation, practical application and wider political implications.

Theoretically, the article uses a processural racial eliminativist approach to address these conceptual, practical and political concerns. Processural racial eliminativism aims to eliminate the category and concept of race through an ongoing deconstructive process. This process foregrounds race as reified, questions its salience and advocates the use of other terms for descriptive purposes such as ethnicity and racialization. But even though race is reified, corresponding prejudicial beliefs and attitudes as well as discriminatory actions result in racism—Miles (1993) referred to this as ‘the idea of race’ nonetheless leading to racism as a social event and thus the proper object of sociological study. Mindful of the reality of racism, processural racial eliminativism focuses less on what racial categories are than what they are created to do—a key work in this regard is Paul Gilroy’s (2000) critique of ‘raciology’. In relation to BAME specifically, racial eliminativist critical scrunity of categories and attention to racism and antiracism is used to evaluate why the state critique calls for the disuse of the acronym and develop counterarguments for the continued relevance of a collective category.

Contesting BAME under neoliberal ‘post-multiculturalism’

The front against BAME is wide-ranging. In addition to the government, numerous organisations including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 as well as centrist and right-wing think tanks such as British Future and the Heywood Foundation respectively have all called for the disuse of BAME (BBC, 2021; Heywood Foundation, n d; Katwala, 2021). These pervasive objections to BAME are formulated within the wider discursive and programmatic terrain of British multiculturalism. More specifically, this strong critique of BAME has gathered strength amidst strident ‘post-multicultural’ debate over the multi-ethnic future of Britain.

Post-multiculturalism has been figured in various ways. In Britain, this post-multicultural trend is a shift away from the defining moment of the 1985 Swann Report championing a multicultural curriculum in statutory education promoting and normalising cultural diversity. Broadly speaking, post-multiculturalism dates from the early 2000s. It is claimed that the fragile plural multiculturalist consensus was disrupted by emergent concerns with an impending ‘crisis’ and socio-historical change (Gozdecka et al., 2014; Matejskova and Antonsich, 2015; Vertovec, 2010; Zapata-Barrero, 2017). Largely predicated on post-colonial migration, the pluralist project championing the maintenance of cultural group distinctiveness was adjudged to result in poor social integration and intergenerational disadvantage. Within post-multiculturalism, pluralist issues were superseded by new patterns of migration, ‘superdiversity’ and reconfigurations of national identity (Vertovec, 2010). Alongside this shift away from ‘new commonwealth’ migrants as the paradigmatic subjects of plural multiculturalism, other emergent issues including security, gender equality and human rights gained increasing attention (Gozdecka et al., 2014). Essentially, the post-multicultural question is a reconsideration of the pluralist dilemma of how—indeed whether—to reconcile recognizing ethnic and cultural difference with the collective rights and responsibilities of citizenship. This pivot away from cultural pluralism is apparent within the state critique of BAME viewing a strong commitment to diversity as undermining social cohesion, typifying a key post-multicultural concern.

The post-multiculturalism question has emerged within a wider neoliberal context. Received wisdom characterises neoliberalism as an individualistic social order produced dispassionately by a mechanistic market. However, many analyses see race and racism as central to neoliberalism and linked to enduring forces of ‘racial capitalism’ (Issar, 2021; Melamed, 2006), resulting in what Goldberg (2009) terms ‘racial neoliberalism’. The easing of transnational flows of private capital, goods, services and information under racial neoliberalism is held to have impacted racialised populations differently. Neoliberal capital inexorably expands globally while restrictions are imposed on migration from the Global South (Davison and Shire, 2015). Racial neoliberalism is also beset by constituent contradictions. A core neoliberal objective to shrink the state is accompanied by the growth of state systems and repressive agencies to restrict migration from global South to the North (Goldberg, 2009). In addition, the disjuncture between the neoliberal market order predicated on free movement and restrictive immigration policies excluding unskilled Southern populations is explained away by what Kundnani (2021) terms a deeper ‘racial-civilisational project’. This project combines a normative account of borderless free market systems with an exceptionalist and culturally racist notion of Western liberal, egalitarian cultural systems that need to be transplanted elsewhere (Kundnani, 2021: 64).

In the UK, ‘racial neoliberalism’ is reflected within key post-multicultural anxieties surrounding migration, social cohesion, security and policing. Goldberg’s observation of the racial neoliberal state’s dialectical character as economically shrunken and bloated social controls is repeated within post-multicultural Britain. On one hand, the UK government coruscates ‘the state’ in various forms—‘welfare’, ‘nanny’ and ‘state multiculturalism.’ On the other hand, the reach and authority of the state is leveraged in a sweeping decision on BAME designed to delimit language and engineer social outcomes. And as Kundnani points out, the ‘racisms of the border, of law and order, and of counter-terrorism are the arenas within which the complex fears, tensions and anxieties generated by neoliberalism and its discontents are projected and worked through’ (2021: 64). Additionally, the ‘Prevent’ agenda is viewed as exemplifying racial neoliberalism by supporting ‘funding for community programmes which extend the role of state policing’ (Kapoor, 2013: 1042). Cases such as Prevent are interpreted as using opaque neoliberal ideals such as freedom, egalitarianism, opportunity and responsibility to obscure racial concerns. These attempts at obscuring race are often seen as a disingenuous ‘postracial’ variety of racial neoliberalism; for example, using an ‘egalitarian’—i.e. racially transcendent—ideal to frame opposition to affirmative action and EDI initiatives (Goldberg, 2015). As will be discussed below, many characteristics attributed to racial neoliberalism play out in the government disavowal of BAME. In part, the acronym is held to erase ethno-racial groups’ specific existence and experiences, causing cultural and identitarian harms as well as demographic inaccuracies. BAME is also criticised as precluding individual responsibility and downplaying opportunity by dwelling negatively on racial conflict and a sense of racism as pervasive.

In response to the perceived proliferation of race and racism within neoliberalism, it is often argued that analyses of racial neoliberalism and practical antiracist strategies should foreground race (Goldberg, 2009; Issar, 2021; Melamed, 2006). This specific methodological debate and activist strategizing as it relates to (racial) neoliberalism per se is beyond the scope of this article. For the discussion at hand, neoliberalism is important insofar as it provides an informative context for post-multiculturalism and the contestation of BAME. However, the appeal made by critics of racial neoliberalism to refocus on race provides a notable point of contrast for the exposition and analysis below. The processural racial eliminativist framework used in this article takes a divergent approach and decentres race. Fundamentally, this article views BAME as a pan ethnic and statistical category with a primarily administrative function. BAME was designed in this way to aggregate instances of discrimination. Therefore, BAME it is not an identity descriptor even though it has been misused as a collective noun and appended erroneously to persons. The processural racial eliminativist analytical analysis undertaken here aims to understand how and why ‘groups’ and social dynamics are racialized and de-racialized within the state critique of BAME. Processural racial eliminativism is used to decode the putative neutral and beneficial claims in the government’s opposition to BAME and detail its underlying value agenda and practical objectives. Therefore, it is important to now explicate the state critique of BAME.

The state critique of BAME

In 2020, the UK government established CRED, chaired by the educationalist Tony Sewell, to examine ‘race and ethnic disparities in education, employment, crime and policing and health’ (CRED, 2021: 6). Part of the Commission’s work involved an assessment of the BAME category. In his introduction to the report, Sewell shared that ‘I wanted to call one of the chapters “The end of BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic)”’ (CRED, 2021: 8) The report was highly critical of the acronym and in response the UK government announced its departments would discontinue use of BAME altogether (HM Government, 2022).

The publication of the CRED report in 2021 and the government’s response, Inclusive Britain, the following year mark a significant intervention in the BAME debate. In a dedicated section, ‘Why BAME doesn’t work’, the CRED report asserts that the acronym ‘is no longer helpful’ (CRED, 2021: 32). The reasons for this perceived inadequacy are numerous. BAME is ‘demeaning’ as it defines people in negative terms—‘what we are not’—as opposed to affirmatively—‘what we are’ (CRED, 2021: 32). Moreover, the acronym is deemed obfuscatory as it ‘disguises huge differences in outcomes between ethnic groups’ and reductively attributes ‘all disparities’ to ‘majority versus minority discrimination’ (CRED, 2021: 32). This shortcoming is then compounded insofar as the acronym is seen to enable ‘institutions and business’ to foreground ‘the success of some BAME people in their organisation and absolve themselves of responsibility for people from those minority groups that are doing less well’ (CRED, 2021: 32). Inclusive Britain concurs with the CRED report: BAME is poorly comprehended amongst the general population, ‘obscures important disparities between ethnic groups’ and can enable organizations to make inaccurate claims of general minority ethnic progress (HM Government, 2022: 14).

Prescriptively, both texts share action points. The CRED report bluntly states: ‘It is time we dropped the term’ (CRED, 2021: 32), while Inclusive Britain recommends ‘disaggregating “BAME”’ in order ‘to better focus on understanding disparities and outcomes for specific ethnic groups’ (HM Government, 2022: 31). BAME ‘obscures important disparities between different ethnic groups’ including ‘instances where some groups are actually doing better than average’ (HM Government, 2022: 14, emphasis added). As some ethnic groups demonstrate higher than average levels of achievement, the overarching notion of BAME groups as subject to disadvantage, discrimination, inequality and poor life chances is inaccurate. Given black, Asian and minority ethnic people’s varied experiences and social outcomes, BAME data is understood as meaningless and should be disaggregated.

This proposed disaggregation leads to an unequivocal conclusion:

To communicate more effectively on racial issues and to avoid lumping together different ethnic minority groups, the government has stopped using the term ‘BAME’ in its own communications and will encourage other public sector bodies to do the same (HM Government, 2022: 31).

Following the disaggregation and disuse of BAME, a further action point resolves:

To improve the presentation and to assist the interpretation of data on ethnic disparities, the RDU will consult by summer 2022 on a set of proposals to reform the Ethnicity facts and figures website, with a view to maintaining a smaller range of the most useful data sets (HM Government, 2022: 31).

Taken together, the CRED report and Inclusive Britain offer a conclusive response to the first pair of questions concerning this article. Simply put, BAME is deemed objectionable because it is morally, descriptively and practically inadequate and can result in discriminatory harm against the very people it is supposed to represent. And lastly, the acronym should be disused because it is inferior to standard ethnic categories, produces inadequate data, and has a poor explanatory capacity and communicative function.

The CRED report and Inclusive Britain hold forth on BAME as part of a wider remit and should be understood in that context. The Commission was established in 2020 with support from the Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit (RDU) and tasked with investigating ‘race and ethnic disparities in the UK’ (CRED, 2021: 6). Using RDU datasets, the Commission’s remit was markedly broad, claiming a contrast to previous reviews often addressing single issues. Additionally, the CRED report describes its work as ‘the first government-commissioned study on race that seriously engages with the family’ (CRED, 2021: 6) which, as will be discussed below, is a significant theme. Overall, the report declares an objective approach, recognising the existence of ‘individual instances’ of prejudice and discrimination. Nevertheless, the report states that ‘evidence and data’ point to Britain as ‘a relatively open society’ with a stronger race equality agenda than European countries. Ultimately, the Commission’s recommendations were grouped into four themes: ‘build trust’, ‘promote fairness’, ‘create agency’ and ‘achieve inclusivity’ and designed as the ‘most effective way to meaningfully address disparities and inequalities for all those affected’ (CRED, 2021: 12, original emphasis).

The CRED report also states that racism is a ‘potent taboo’ in Britain. ‘Strident’ anti-racism that reduces explanations of ‘minority disadvantage’ to ‘White discrimination’ is considered problematic, especially as ‘the roots of advantage and disadvantage for different groups are complex, and often as much to do with social class, “family” culture and geography as ethnicity’ (CRED, 2021: 10). Therefore, social disadvantage and inequity, even when highly correlate with ethnicity, are characterised as having multifactorial causality; they are irreducible to and cannot be explained solely in terms of ethnic discrimination. Such ‘joined-up’ thinking across social categories and processes was a feature of new Labour thinking in the closure of the Commission for Racial Equality as an outmoded reductive approach to social inequality and also evident within the Conservative government ‘levelling up’ agenda. Having established the government view on what is objectionable about BAME and the rationale for its disuse, focus now turns to the second pair of questions: What are the conjunctural conditions for this critique and proscription? What are the wider political implications of accepting the government decision?

Meritocracy and minority ethnic social mobility

The putative advent of post-multiculturalism saw the privileging of ethnocultural group diversity being questioned; for example, from the New Labour pivot towards community cohesion and social inclusion (Mathieu, 2018; Wadia and Allwood, 2012) to David Cameron’s (2011) Munich Security Conference speech condemning ‘the doctrine of state multiculturalism.’ New Labour and Conservatives alike disavowed the plural multiculturalist ethos emphasizing cultural difference, endemic ethnic discrimination and minority ethnic communities’ poor life chances. Instead, within the neoliberal post-multicultural context, the political establishment sought to promulgate a different national environment exemplifying meritocracy, opportunity and social mobility for all. For example, the 2023 Inclusive Britain update report hails an expansive agenda: ‘Whether you’re a white working class pupil in Bolton, a black entrepreneur in Barking and Dagenham, or an Asian employee in Birmingham, this action plan will ensure you’re treated fairly and given the tools to thrive in society’ (HM Government, 2023).

The state critique of BAME reiterates this observation, with the CRED report largely referring to ethnic groups in terms of social opportunity, aspiration and achievement. Extending Linton Kwesi Johnson’s characterisation of the ‘heroic’ era of initial post-war migrants and their children as the ‘rebel’ generation of the 1970s and 1980s, Sewell notes the present as a new ‘era of “participation”’ (CRED, 2021: 7). Sewell then depicts an inclusive, dialogic and more ‘open’ Britain: ‘… we want all children to reclaim their British heritage…. We want to see how Britishness influenced the Commonwealth and local communities, and how the Commonwealth and local communities influenced what we now know as modern Britain’ (CRED, 2021: 8). Similarly, the anti-BAME state position detailed in Inclusive Britain is advanced as building trust and fostering social cohesion in part through the government ‘improving the way we discuss race in order to foster social cohesion and remove stigmatisation, deliberate or otherwise of any ethnic group’ (HM Government, 2022: 41).

By encouraging a collective and socially cohesive British national identity and polity, the anti-BAME state position is presented as a positive and affirmative project. A key criticism of BAME in the CRED report and Inclusive Britain is that concentration on a power differential between groups and resultant inequalities is divisive. BAME, therefore, is held to endorse majority and minority ethnic assemblages as competing entities, perpetuating a notion of ongoing conflict whereby ‘pessimistic narratives about race have also been reinforced by a rise of identity politics, as old class divisions have lost traction’ (CRED, 2021: 31). From a post-multiculturalist perspective, this adversarial temper is cast as a legacy of the pluralist recognition, promotion and protection of minority ethnic exclusivity against an ostensibly repressive state. Just as post-multicultural discussion has given rise to an ‘intercultural’ perspective more focused on local interactions between groups with diversity as the basis to form common bonds (Zapata-Barrero, 2017), the rejection of BAME articulated within the CRED and Inclusive Britain reports has a conciliatory tone and espouses a mutually beneficial meritocratic ideal.

Under neoliberalism, the ideal of meritocracy, acclaimed within the CRED report and Inclusive Britain, has marketised equality as the objective outcome of an aggressive competitive and entrepreneurial ethos (Littler, 2013). Within meritocratic and inclusive Britain, the ‘talented individual’ personifies the prevailing view that talent will out; social mobility is accessible to those who deserve it as a result of their individual efforts. However, the neoliberal post-multicultural characterisation of meritocratic Britain championed within the CRED report and Inclusive Britain appear differently from a processural racial eliminativist perspective. Deviating from a neoliberal preoccupation with individuals, minority ethnic groups experience difficulties accessing meritocratic social mobility qua ‘groups’. The Casey Review, for example, notes that different ethnic communities lead parallel lives thus contributing in part to their social disadvantage and marginalisation—a point cited by the CRED report (CRED, 2021: 43). Claiming that ‘Cultural or religious factors and attitudes may also be contributing to poorer labour market outcomes for some communities,’ the Review cites data stating that a higher proportion of Muslims (38%) believe that mothers should be homemakers than Christians (18%) and the non-religious (11%), with more Muslims (52%) regarding mothers’ labour force participation as detrimental to the family compared to Christians (34%) and the non-religious (23%) (Casey, 2016: 93).

In processural racial eliminativist terms the question is not whether this is an accurate description of group characteristics. Nor is the point to correct any misrepresentation with a truthful account of collective identity and cultural traits. Instead, the point is to determine why minority ethnic groups are characterised in this way and the function(s) it serves. According to these government commissioned depictions, minority ethnic groups’ experiences of poor social outcomes are attributable to their own failure to integrate and assimilate effectively. Reiterating ‘responsibility’ as another key neoliberal theme, exclusion from social mobility is a direct outcome of group traits. And while it is admitted that minority ethnic groups are subject to a degree of discrimination, this is put on a par with their own supposed deleterious attitudes and behaviour. Both of these aspects, group character and discrimination, are seen as ‘equally worrying things’ (Casey, 2016: 5, emphasis added). This observation draws an equivalence between prevailing social structure and minority ethnic group culture and agency. In turn, minority ethnic groups’ own culpability indemnifies the state, at least partially, from responsibility for those groups’ unequal outcomes. Disusing BAME under the proviso of promoting social inclusion and recognising individual agency removes an analytical means to substantiate ethnic inequality, discrimination and racism. As will be discussed below, this omission is an implication of state opposition to BAME.

Concentrating on the discursive production of race within neoliberal post-multicultural meritocracy also draws attention to the fomenting of racial antagonism within a supposedly dispassionate, individualistic and marketized social order. Part of the rationale for the state critique of BAME is to eliminate the plural multicultural doxa thought to privilege minority ethnic communities. This motivation is viewed in zero-sum terms. Eradicating BAME simultaneously promotes an expanded notion of inclusion that folds in the hitherto excluded (again, white working class) majority, lamented as the ‘left behind’ in the Brexit debate (Bhambra, 2017). Disusing BAME emphasises the new post-multicultural British landscape where the key government ‘levelling up’ agenda is expanded to include hitherto excluded (white) ethnic disparities. Crucially, this entails displacing BAME from its supposed privileged and protected position that had marginalised white Britons. To disuse BAME, then, is to simultaneously actuate a counteracting notion of white Britishness. This stratagem is not exclusively pursued out of any racial supremacist ideal but, as I have argued elsewhere and develop again below, is designed to minimise the existence of racism and therefore eliminate the need for ameliorative public policy initiatives.

Cultural pathology and hyperspecificity

As we have seen, within the state critique of BAME, minority ethnic groups’ unequal social outcomes are neither attributable to a lack of opportunity nor endemic discrimination. In part, the state objects to BAME’s false homogeneity and supports retaining a sense of group characteristics. To this end, distinct ethnic attributes and behaviours are presented as contributing to groups’ varied levels of achievement. For example, low language proficiency is presented as a cultural behavioural failing of some groups leading to intergenerational ethnic disadvantage (Casey, 2016; CRED, 2021). In addition, Inclusive Britain advances the claim that ‘often the causes of disparities exist “upstream”’; ethnic group disparities are held to largely originate in ‘family, early years and cultural integration’ (HM Government, 2022: 14). As cultural behaviour is viewed to manifest prior to groups’ engagement with formal educational, workplace and healthcare settings, ethnic characteristics thus significantly impact social outcomes. But by describing ethnic attributes and behaviours in this way, state commissioned responses generate given group representations. Some minority ethnic groups are typified as existing in a cycle of social deprivation because of their own collective character and behaviour. This application of responsibility to an entire ethnic group contradicts the standard neoliberal apportionment of responsibility to individuals. Extrapolating agency and responsibility from the individual to the group is not simply an erroneous calculation but informs a pathological description of the latter.

The characterisation of some minority ethnic groups as possessing pathological deficiencies is evident within the family theme in the CRED report and Inclusive Britain. The ability to form ‘stable families’ is presented as a significant contributory factor to groups’ life chances with ‘family breakdown’ shown to prevail within certain communities (Centre for Social Justice, 2020; HM Government, 2022). Disproportionately higher levels of black children (Caribbean and African) living in lone-parent households is then reported but not explained. One might contest these findings by providing contrary evidence supporting an alternative account of group characteristics. The racial eliminativist analysis here, however, is concerned instead with how ‘groups’ are characterised and why. As a result, government accounts of prevalent black familial breakdown implicitly signal a cultural, moral and behavioural deficit; black minority ethnic communities are depicted as indicative of ‘those who have been unable to form strong families’ (HM Government, 2022: 61). These families are regarded as generalisable types instead of discrete domestic units; attitudes and behaviours are extrapolated from individuals to families and then onto communities and groups. Ultimately, state judgments of black groups’ alleged inability to build cohesive family units is cast as an implicit inadequacy, ascribed to them as a pathological collective deficiency.

These supposed predominant cultural attitudes and behaviours are not viewed in relativist terms as merely ‘different’. Rather, ostensibly plain depictions of minority ethnic group characteristics in state reports are in fact qualitative judgments of their moral values and social worth. Some minority ethnic groups are described in evaluative terms as deficient: family instability and breakdown and lone parenting are all implicitly negative outcomes. Also, the use of ‘stable,’ ‘breakdown’ and ‘lone-parent’ adjectives relate to desired and undesirable family structures and, as such, carry a moral connotation. While the CRED report declares a non-judgmental view of lone-parenting and a disinterest in allocating blame, their conclusions are disapproving nonetheless. Lone-parent families are said to require ‘inevitably greater’ support and are ultimately non-ideal households as ‘children require both time and resources, and that is more likely to be available when both parents play active roles in their upbringing’ (2021: 42). Finally, a judgmental position is taken with the CRED report stating that governments cannot remain neutral on ‘family breakdown’. The report also suggests a wider impact of minority ethnic family breakdown in contributing to social problems. Drawing on The Lammy Review (2017), the CRED report also partially attributes racial disparities in police stop and search and the overrepresentation of minority ethnic youth in the criminal justice system to family breakdown: the ‘causes and drivers of suspected and actual criminal activity’ include a set of environmental factors one of which is the likelihood of black children and young people growing up in a lone-parent family (CRED, 2021: 144).

Sub-dividing BAME still further, the state conclusions also address intra-group differentiation. Questioning the descriptive and analytical salience of ethnic group as a social category, Inclusive Britain examines hyperspecificity. The government view notes the importance of developing greater ‘sensitivity to differences within racial or ethnic groups, such as urban middleclass Gujaratis versus rural Mirpuri, which are arguably bigger than most differences between ethnic groups.’ (HM Government, 2022: 33). While BAME is derided as forcing discrete ethnic groups into a disjointed pan ethnic category, hyperspecificity recognises ethnic minutiae. This detailed appreciation of significant intra-group variation is justified as a preferable ‘granular’ approach to ethnicity. However, dividing standard ethnonational categories in this way can be problematic. Top-down governmental decisions regarding ethnic and sub-ethnic granularity can disempower actors closer to practical issues of race equality ‘on the ground.’ Researchers and practitioners closer to communities make methodological judgments on aggregating or disaggregating data on minority ethnic groups when designing social research and campaigns. In racial eliminativist analytical terms, the implications of ethnic granularity also deserve consideration. What function does a granular approach perform in the context of the state critique of BAME? What facets of group social existence are measured and elided with the methodological adoption of a granular approach?

On one hand, a granular approach can enable a nuanced understanding of ethnic groups’ social experiences and outcomes ignored within accounts shaped according to standardised categories. However, on the other hand, an appreciation of the power dynamic operating within social categorisation is absent. Governmental preference for granularity is notably presented as purely descriptive, simply identifying differences as they apparently exist within groups. As will be discussed below, this amounts to stating the existence of ‘disparity’ without necessarily accounting for its provenance and effects. Additionally, focusing on hyperspecificity disregards the dynamism and hierarchical arrangement of ethnic and racial categories formed according to political projects (Bashi, 1998). While noting class differences between urban/rural migrant populations as demographically significant, the CRED report does not state why this reportage is meaningful and how the ‘granular’ data should be used.

Furthermore, hyperspecificity leads to understanding discrimination against minority ethnic groups, when recognised, as heavily localised. To refer to migrants from a Gujarat or Mirpur background eschews national, sub-continental or ethnic categorisation, is highly parochial and bifurcated further by social class. Viewed alongside the disuse of BAME, this means that the extent of racism as a societal issue occurring across ethnic groups is minimised and obscured. Many organisations committed to race equality including the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), Runnymede Trust, and Operation Black Vote all point to the adverse impact of losing a collective term such as BAME. These organisations claim that disaggregating data on pan ethnic inequalities to concentrate instead on highly specific cases would restrict the capacity to identify and combat institutional and structural racism (Malik et al., 2021). An important issue for critical consideration is whether such an injurious outcome is an objective of eradicating BAME or an inadvertent effect. This question can be examined further in relation to governmental focus on ethnic ‘disparity.’

From discrimination to disparity

As Kundnani (2023) has it, a culturalist strand of neoliberal discourse advances an ideal of racial assimilation where diverse groups are incorporated into the dispassionate market order. This purported flattening out of racial differences then contributes to a reduction in prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory practices. Dovetailing with post-multicultural attentiveness to integration and building commonality (Gozdecka et al., 2014), the neoliberal post-multicultural conjuncture lends itself to a less conflictual model of ethnic relations and cultural exchange. Terminological preference for ‘disparity’ over ‘discrimination’ or ‘inequality’ is an indicator of this conjunctural theme. Disparity was an important term for the Conservative government, evident in the establishment of the RDU within the Cabinet Office in 2016 and publication of the Race Disparity Audit (RDA) in 2017. To be clear, material disparities undeniably exist between ethnic groups: for example, UK government household income data for August 2025 show that 45% of UK households have a weekly income of under £600, with black households (54%) the most likely of all ethnic groups to be in this bracket. In addition, Indian households (14%) are most likely to have a weekly income of £2000 or more while Bangladeshi and Pakistani households (both 3%) are least likely (Race Equality Unit, 2025).

These quantifiable disparities inform a weighty conclusion. ‘The idea that all ethnic minority people suffer a common fate and a shared disadvantage,’ states the CRED report, ‘is an anachronism’ (2021: 27). Furthermore, ‘advancing the progress… of the past 50 years’ is the main issue of the moment instead of ‘overt racial prejudice’ (2021: 27). Nevertheless, the report also expresses an understanding of some minority ethnic communities’ and people’s perceptions and experiences of discrimination as posing ‘a key question’: ‘What lies behind disparity?’ (CRED, 2021: 27). The short answer is that disparity is complex. Inclusive Britain finds that disparity is not self-explanatory, noting that police stop and search data reflects demographic and environmental factors as well as ethnic disproportionality. The ‘national relative disparity’ of ethnic groups being subject to stop and search is also impacted by the clustering of certain minority ethnic populations in deprived areas (HM Government, 2022: 47–48). So, ethnic disparities in stop and search cannot be explained solely in ethnic terms, they are also attributable to geography and deprivation.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers another noteworthy example of the complexity of ethnic disparities. In October 2020, the RDU reported disproportionate BAME COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. RDU analysis explained this disproportionality as largely due to socioeconomic factors, geography, deprivation and comorbidities; a strong correlation was also noted between obesity and death from COVID-19 for people from BAME groups (Public Health England, 2020). Consequently, the known causal factors for disproportionate BAME COVID-19 morbidity and mortality were given as predominantly environmental and medical with significant cultural and behavioural aspects—for example, unhealthy ‘lifestyle’ choices such as poor diet and smoking.

Again, from a racial eliminativist perspective, it is important to decode evaluative claims within ostensibly measurable governmental accounts of ‘disparity.’ Regarding the term itself, ‘racial disparity’ has been explained as manifest in two ways: in ‘benign’ form resulting from cultural and demographic differences as opposed to ‘malignant’ disparities derived from discrimination or unfair processes (Hughes, 2024). This distinction is alluded to in the CRED report, noting ‘a tendency to conflate discrimination and disparities; whilst they sometimes co-exist they often do not’ (CRED, 2021: 34). Used by the RDU and CRED, ‘disparity’ is presented as a benign label, offering a more neutral characterisation of relative inter-group social difference than inequality. However, uncovering this distinction invites reflection on the implications of presenting ethnic disparities as primarily benign.

Overall, though, disparity discourse minimises discrimination and inequality. Typified as benign, disparity also obscures the apposition of ethnic groups’ social advantage and disadvantage. Consequently, the advantaged maintain their opportunities, status and privileges, while the disadvantaged continue to face marginalisation and discrimination. Therefore, abandoning BAME is not simply a descriptive matter of accurate ethnic group nomenclature or methodological issue of categorical refinement. An IRR intervention forecasts government disuse of BAME will result in indistinct discussions of ‘inequality’ framed in relation to ‘ethnic disadvantage’ and focused on ‘differences in ethnic outcomes attributed to cultural and genetic factors, rather than the discriminatory hand of state institutions’ (IRR, 2021). Applications of this cultural phrasing and nebulous ‘disadvantage’ are evident in the cultural pathologisation noted above as well as oblique reference to ‘ethnicity outcome gaps’ and ‘unexplained disparities’ (Centre for Social Justice, 2020).

Minimising and denying racism

The alleged decline of racism is a key aspect of racial neoliberalism; meritocratic societies are supposedly predicated on equality of opportunity, with social outcomes held to result from individual ability and application (Goldberg, 2015). For its part, post-multicultural focus on social cohesion and ethnic inclusion differs from plural multicultural concerns with conflict and racism. Therefore, the extent to which racism remains a social force is a key issue within the neoliberal post-multicultural conjuncture. Alongside the question of the prevalence of racism compared to the past, is the issue of whether it should retain such a predominant position within contemporary debates.

Widespread criticism charges the CRED report with denying the significance of ongoing institutional and structural racism in Britain (for example see Iacobucci, 2021; Tikly, 2022). Nevertheless, the report does note the existence of prejudice and racism, albeit largely unsubstantiated or a psychological residuum. For example, ‘we did find some evidence of biases, but often it was a perception that the wider society could not be trusted’ (CRED, 2021: 6). Inclusive Britain largely concurs, adding that racially uneven outcomes, such as higher incidence of school exclusions for black pupils, are informed by ‘other factors’ and not necessarily singularly caused by racism (HM Government, 2022: 12). In addition, there is a desire to conjure racism where it does not exist: ‘some groups historic experience of racism still haunts the present and there was a reluctance to acknowledge that the UK had become open and fairer.’ (CRED, 2021: 6). And then, notions of ongoing racism articulated by long standing communities is countered by newcomers’ attitudes, experiences and outcomes: ‘the “immigrant optimism” of some of the new African communities’ marks them as ‘among the new high achievers in our education system. As their black Caribbean peers sit in the same classrooms, it is difficult to blame racism in education for the latter’s underachievement’ (CRED, 2021: 7).

As well as qualifying what is deemed racism, limitations and proscriptions are placed on usage of the term. Two examples of this are articulated within the CRED report. First, the term ‘racism’ as well as certain iterations—‘institutional’, ‘structural’ and ‘systemic’—should be used cautiously, if at all. These terms are dismissed as overused, often misconstrued, incoherent and inflammatory; the definition of racism has been expanded to such an extent leading to ‘rising sensitivity… stretching the meaning of racism without objective data to support it’ (CRED, 2021: 45). And second, the report criticises ‘White privilege’ and ‘White fragility’ as ‘counterproductive and divisive.’ White privilege is said to be misleading, encouraging a fallacious notion of white ‘attitudes and behaviours’ causing minority ethnic ‘disadvantage’ (CRED, 2021: 36). Differing levels of belief in the existence of white privilege among black people (76%), all ethnic minorities (59%) and white people (29%) is taken to suggest the term’s basis in subjective opinion instead of objective reality (CRED, 2021: 46). Overall, the report takes an optimistic view on racism. British race and ethnic relations are said to have made significant progress, with a majority of minority ethnic people and the general population sharing this view. Belief in the proliferation of racism thus risks being a prophetic fallacy for minority ethnic people mistakenly assuming their race limits their life chances.

Returning to racial eliminativism provides an instructive analytical frame through which to assess these claims. An important aspect of processural racial eliminativism is to avoid reifying race but understand why it is confected while also focusing on racism as the proper object of social scientific analysis. In this vein, the state critique of BAME can be interpreted as indicative of racism denial. There are some ‘biases’, but not racism; an intractable dwelling on past racism results in a reluctance to accept present fairness—and opportunity; and the educational successes of what is effectively a black ‘model minority’ serves to invalidate the existence of anti-black racism. In sum, racial denial promulgates the view that baseless accusations of racism mislabel ‘perfectly normal human feelings like preference for the familiar’ and have become far too common (Goodhart, 2014: 251). The forceful anti-antiracism posture within the CRED report can also be understood as a ‘counter-attack’ using disclaimers, a classic discursive technique of racism denial (Van Dijk, 1993). Racism is said to have receded in Britain making claims to its pervasiveness imaginary and inflated (Goodhart, 2014). This local British denial fits into a broader contention that endemic racism is an abstract totalising dogma inconsistent with social reality (Hughes, 2024).

CRED report objections to ‘white privilege’ arguably contain a justification for racism. Dismissing the validity of white privilege on one hand, the report nonetheless also finds that ‘affinity bias’, a term ‘which usefully captures the tendency for groups to favour their own’, has some merit (CRED, 2021: 36). Affinity bias is excused as ‘racial self-preference’ (Kaufmann, 2017) and ‘clannishness’ that is sometimes distastefully prejudicial but not necessarily harmfully racist (Goodhart, 2014). Racism is thus elided as in-grouping which is justifiably ‘pro-self’ instead of ‘anti-other.’ However, white privilege and white fragility are denounced as fomenting racism. Antiracists’ reference to white privilege and fragility are condemned as ‘neo racist’ (Hughes, 2024) and a form of ‘woke racism’ (McWhorter, 2021).

By adopting this tone and denouncing an unspecified antiracist activist lobby, the CRED report substantiates the critical view that the ‘primary targets now would seem to be those campaigning against structural inequalities rather than those perpetuating such inequalities’ (Gedalof, 2023: 265). Racism denial presents important analytical and practical insights for the debate on BAME. Simply put, disaggregating BAME and focusing on benign disparity and racism denial is a rearguard action against social justice and anti-racism. And lastly, BAME is an administrative pan ethnic category designed to aggregate generalised instances of racism. In this vein, it is worth noting that the CRED report distinguishes Britain from European countries that do not collect ethnic monitoring and racism data.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, BAME has proved problematic including its misuse as an identity descriptor: BAME is not a valid replacement for specific ethnic group categories. But social justice, race equality and antiracist activists’ views on BAME are varied, both critical and supportive. For example, the intercultural educational not-for-profit organisation SIETAR UK and the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity report on ethnic diversity in the cultural industries (Malik et al., 2021) object to BAME including it being homogenising and demeaning. The adjudged poor and discriminatory functionality of BAME extends to underreporting and obscuring specific ethnic groups’ levels of inclusion and inequality within given industries (Malik et al., 2021).

Such adverse consequences are linked to wider concerns over the discriminatory capacities of categories. In this vein, H. Samy Alim’s (2016) concept of ‘linguistic racism’ points to the use of language to create groups in negative value terms that can be oppressive. Therefore, the act of labelling minority ethnic groups, such as BAME, can function as a form of social exclusion and control. This is evident in objections to BAME including use of the word ‘minority’ which can make those labelled as such feel socially marginalised (Aspinall, 2002) and not fully British (Katwala, 2021). Conversely, the London Tower Hamlets Council’s use of the acronym ‘ESW/Is’ to denote white English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish has been criticised as a ‘belittling compound title’ (Dench et al., 2006: 219). However, the point here is not that this acronym misnames people as does BME or BAME. Rather, the objection is partially that ESW/Is misnames ethnonational groups, effectively ranking (‘indigenous’) white Britons alongside recent migrants or ‘the most tenuous of hyphenates.’ Categories, then, can function asymmetrically to create and reinforce the hierarchical social arrangement of ethnic groups.

Amid the state promotion of individualist meritocracy, reiteration of cultural pathology, terminological preference for disparity over discrimination and the minimisation of racism, BAME (or some viable alternative collective category) has an analytic use alongside standard ethnic categories. As stated above, the IRR and Operation Black Vote are among notable antiracist organisations recognising the acronym as having some practical utility. On one hand, BAME can be used to aggregate instances of discrimination that substantiate racism as a significant societal problem experienced by numerous minority ethnic groups. Gill refers to ‘the primary value of BAME’ as an analytic tool to identify ‘systemic disparities that exist within our society’ (2024: 15). On the other hand, within specific empirical examples, social inclusion and discrimination data can be disaggregated to capture ‘granular’ ethnic group-specific experiences.

In racial eliminativist terms, racial categories purporting to describe existing ‘groups’ with distinct (hierarchically arranged) characteristics is inherently problematic. As the processural version of racial eliminativism advocates a deconstructive process that undermines the conceptual and categorical coherence of race, the issue of category-formation is key. Collective ethnic categories are not anthropological descriptions but administrative tools. An important question then is the design of categorical instruments as well as their application and objective ends. In accordance with this racial eliminativist process, pan ethnic collective categories ought to be able to aggregate instances of discrimination, substantiate the existence of racism and assist the development of antiracist practice.