![]() You can see in his eyes, filled with wisdom and experience, that he’s quickly losing interest in this conversation. However, the interviewer is frowning, he’s disappointed. Being happy and excited you announce that you would like to use a naive approach with O(nk) complexity. The interviewer, your fellow developer, whose seniority and proficiency are beyond doubt and cannot be challenged by anyone, presents you with a problem that boils down to pattern matching. This followed research by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity which found a lack of trust around the term, with some arguing that it allowed organisations to ‘average out’ and hide a lack of representation or overlook issues faced by particular ethnic groups.So here you are, sitting and being interviewed for the position in your dream company. In December, the BBC and other UK broadcasters said they would no longer use the term BAME. We are not the only ones to have reached this conclusion. Where it is absolutely necessary to group together people from different ethnic minority backgrounds, we should say ‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘people from ethnic minority backgrounds’. This was updated last December and recommends that, wherever possible, we should use the specific ethnic classifications of the census. In 2019, the Race Disparity Unit issued guidance on how to write about ethnicity. Perhaps more importantly though, many ethnic minorities themselves say they dislike the term ‘BAME’, a finding that has been reinforced by recent research commissioned by the Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit (RDU) during the pandemic. ‘BAME’ is also often used as a generic term for ‘non-white’, which can be unintentionally divisive. The term ‘BAME’ emphasises certain ethnic minority groups (Asian and black) and excludes others, such as the ‘mixed’, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and ‘other white’ ethnic minority groups that also face negative disparities. But looking at these results from a ‘BAME’ perspective would have skewed the picture, masking the success of those particular groups and under-performance by others. In 2019, a higher than average percentage of children in state-funded schools from Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi groups achieved strong passes in English and Maths GCSEs. For example, we know that the picture of educational achievement across different ethnic groups is complex. This can disguise huge differences in outcomes between ethnic groups. ‘BAME’ is a catch-all term, frequently used to group all ethnic minorities together. But why does this matter? Disguising differences It also includes a commitment to no longer use the term ‘BAME’ in government. This sets out an action plan intended to tackle negative disparities, promote unity and build a fairer Britain for all. Its response to the Commission’s report, ‘Inclusive Britain’, was published on 17 March 2022. It recommended they should be dropped, advocating instead a focus on understanding disparities and outcomes - such as in education or health - for specific ethnic groups. In its report, published on 31 March 2021, the Commission found aggregate terms like ‘BAME’ (black, Asian and minority ethnic) were no longer helpful. ![]() In the summer of 2020, the Prime Minister appointed the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities to review the causes for race inequality in the UK. We also need to be precise in developing solutions to address the gaps in outcomes between those groups. How we write about race and ethnicity matters a lot.Īs civil servants, we need to be as precise as we can in our language when describing different ethnic groups. Government dropped the label BAME, instead advocating a focus on understanding gaps in education Richard Laux and Summer Nisar explain why the UK Civil Service has scrapped the label ‘BAME’ in referring to different ethnic minority groups within society.
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