The outgoing head of the UK’s leading race equality thinktank has said the continued denial of institutional racism has created a credibility issue for the government.
Dr Halima Begum, who is stepping down as the director of Runnymede Trust after three years, said that soon after the government released its controversial report on race, which claimed to not find evidence for institutional racism, there were several national scandals that showed otherwise.
“Every time they denied institutional racism, some other event would happen that showed the realities for people of colour living in Britain. If it wasn’t the Casey review, it was the cricket, or the experience of the black England footballers at the Euros. Every time there’s a denial of racism, it surfaces out again. So no, they were not successful,” she said.
She added: “I would say the more they tried to deny the existence of racism, the more they showed themselves to be not committed to race and, in fact, not committed to many people in this country, because the rest of the country could see the disparities. I think it created a bit of a credibility issue for the government and those that would deny institutional racism.”
Begum began her tenure as the head of Runnymede in 2020, at a time when multiple issues, from coronavirus to Black Lives Matter protests, were affecting the country.
On Black Lives Matter, Begum said: “It felt like we were living through quite a historic and seismic time … It felt so hopeful.
“But it also placed a tremendous responsibility on those of us who are a bit older to do something because we know what happens when young people’s demands are not met. There’s nothing worse than people hitting the streets and then finding out that actually your action doesn’t matter. So I was aware that there was a window of opportunity, a very short time span, to try and deliver those demands into outcomes that could change policy and could change the life opportunities for the next generation.”
Before the launch of the government’s race report, equality groups expressed concerns with the process. But Begum said Runnymede Trust had engaged fully with the commission.
“We were going to make it work. We were going to hold them to account. Now the individuals that they chose perhaps didn’t have the best record on race, but you could still work for that process and want better outcomes. Some people might say that’s naive, but from an organisational perspective, you have to push it to deliver more.”
The report, when it finally landed in March 2021, was widely criticised for playing down the role of structural racism in modern British society. UK bodies that were credited in the report quickly distanced themselves from it, while UN human rights experts described it as an attempt to “normalise white supremacy”.
Begum said it was startling to see the denial of institutional racism in the UK. “It was still quite shocking and the reason why it was shocking to see that denial was because of the twin energy from Black Lives Matter and Covid around the bare-face reality of racism.”
When the report came out, Begum was caring for her father who was being treated for cancer. “The medical staff treating my father at the time wrote up a DNR for my dad without the family’s authorisation, which I think would have been less likely to happen if I was white … One of the doctors also assumed that I was my dad’s second wife even though Dad was 45 years older than me and Mum was in the room.”
She added: “Everybody’s quick to say: ‘We understand individual acts of racism: that’s a bad person, they were racist.’ But if hundreds of bad people are racist in an institution, it becomes an institutional problem.”
In response to Runnymede Trust’s criticism of the report, more than a dozen Conservatives wrote to the Charity Commission demanding an investigation into the organisation. The commission later found the thinktank did not breach charity guidance.
Begum said she was receiving death threats at the time and described the attacks on Runnymede Trust as a damning reality. “The idea that a charity set up to speak out against racism wasn’t allowed to speak out against racism, that’s the tragedy. The political system is so broken that somehow everything feels distorted and you cannot stand for what’s right, according to your charitable objectives.”
Still, she feels proud of the work that she was able to achieve at her time at Runnymede Trust. “I am very proud to have been at an institution that has weathered the storm of multiple fronts of attacks, very proud to be part of an institution that has stood the test of time, and we prevailed.”
