The Sewell report recommends that schoolchildren be taught how enslaved Africans in the Caribbean culturally transformed themselves, thereby providing a more positive impression of the experiences of the enslaved than one that focuses only on profit and suffering (Racial disparities in the UK: key findings of the report – and what its critics say, March 31). To look for positives in the experiences of the enslaved is a grotesque parody of research on slavery, much of which emphasises the heroic efforts of those who looked to escape its brutality.
British Caribbean slavery consumed Africans, yet contemporaries seeking to justify it on economic grounds often asserted precisely the cultural benefits for its victims that the commission now proposes we teach schoolchildren. Slavery has no redeeming features. Many working-class people in late 18th-century Britain understood that and supported the abolition of the slave trade. It is disturbing that the commission should casually align itself with those who looked racially to justify it in the past.
David Richardson
Professor of economic history, University of Hull
• Contributors to your panel make undeniable arguments against the Sewell report, but are in danger of missing the point (The verdict on the Sewell report into racial disparity, 31 March). The government didn’t set up the commission to find the truth, but to contain debate. Now, the debate will be about the report, not the issue, and about the personalities – Dr Tony Sewell, Munira Mirza. Tropes such as cancel culture will dominate the discussions – just what the government intended.
The real concern is the government’s urge to define the terms of the debate and effectively prejudge the conclusions. The urgent task is to force it to obtain consent for the terms of reference, the criteria for evidence and the composition of such commissions.
Neil Blackshaw
Barbizon, France
• Every time a new report comes out highlighting an inequality, such as the recent one on exclusion from school for black pupils (Exclusion rates five times higher for black Caribbean pupils in parts of England, 24 March), it is done with an air of surprise, when in fact there have been repeated studies showing the same thing. And the unwillingness to acknowledge that any individual in a position of power is racist or that structural racism exists is, as Kalwant Bhopal suggests (The Sewell report displays a basic misunderstanding of how racism works, 31 March), part of the problem.
For far too long the myth has been that Britain is a land of tolerance. Rather than relying only on statistics, listen to what humans are saying and experiencing. An exercise we used in the 1980s in preparing foster carers was to tell the story of a black child’s day alongside someone with a black paper doll. Every time the child experienced racism, the doll was torn, and at the end of the child’s day, there was a pile of shredded paper on the floor. It was very powerful.
Judy Stober
Bruton, Somerset
• Perhaps there is too much focus on terminology. An institution is a legal entity, not a person. But it is made up of people, some of whom have racist views that affect the way they carry out their work. If less time were spent arguing about whether an entity is “institutionally racist”, more time could be spent on dealing with the racism of individuals within it. For an institution to be declared free of institutional racism might also have the unwanted effect of allowing those in it to think they don’t have a problem to deal with. Focus on what is being done, not on describing it in general terms.
Dr Martin A Smith
Oxford
• A replacement for BAME could be “heritage people”. It is already used in specific contexts – Bangladeshi heritage, African heritage.
Giles Wright
London
• Dr Sewell, soon to be Lord Sewell?
Richard Bartholomew
Colchester, Essex
