MERCY Muroki, a young Oxford research graduate. was on TV discussing the unpopular recent race report by Dr Tony Sewell CBE for the British Government. She has been vilified for her controversial stance as a commissioner on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.
 
Kenyan-born Muroki, at 25 years old probably the youngest of the 11 commissioners, has been speaking on behalf of the Commission at every given media opportunity to stress that Britain is not at all as institutionally racist as it used to be.
 
Muroki believes it and says she can prove it through the statistics of the research report released in March 2021, and that some of the indices even indicate black African people do better than their Afro-Caribbean colleagues in education because of social reasons and the latter are not left behind because of official prejudice.
 
It will be ageist to doubt the 25-year-old, but if we ignore inexperience,then we are in danger of agreeing with Muroki simply through the qualitative and quantitative survey the Commission gathered.
 
Did the researchers gather enough people from ethnic minority and white majority in order to make a conclusive report?

Kudos to the Northern Ireland Civil Service for making a brilliant decision to target minority ethnic communities in their recruitment drive by having open sessions with them when job vacancies are announced.

Not so long ago, people were doing that Thursday Clap to spell doom to Covid-19 and cheer up health sector personnel, many of whom are of the ethnic minority part of society.
 
When Covid was elevated to pandemic levels by government and the media, many people rallied around the important minority impact on the majority of the population, they were celebrated as the frontline workers who were actually dying while saving lives.
 
I have finally read the report. It mainly focuses on education and training, employment, fairness at work, enterprise, crime and policing and, finally, health. Good! But this is what it says.

They found that in most of the disparities examined, which some attribute to racial discrimination, often did not have their origins in racism. Do you detect anything here? Going around in circles with words,confusing us? Tautology, the ancient Greeks I think, would say.
 
The report continues to say that racism has become one of the most potent taboos in the UK, which was not the case 50 years ago. That some argue this has just driven it underground where it operates as powerfully as ever to deny equality to ethnic minorities. Muroki and her colleagues believe that this assumption is at odds with the stories of success that this report has found, together with survey evidence of dwindling white prejudice.

So in short, we are made to believe that institutional racism is a thing of the past.
 
Kudos to the Northern Ireland Civil Service for making a brilliant decision to target minority ethnic communities in their recruitment drive by having open sessions with them when job vacancies are announced.

I feel that the Stormont Assembly can reverse institutional racism and prejudice in recruitment by also working on an affirmative model, a law which will make fair competition but based on the legacy of unfair recruitment and how minorities can be included.

There should be more minority ethnic people being shortlisted, those recruitment panels should have a balanced representation of people from all races and of course meritocracy should be a core item.