The British Humanist Association (BHA) has today responded to the Department for Communities and Local Government’s discussion paper on their forthcoming race equality strategy. The paper asks respondents to help the government in shaping its strategy and asks how the government can tackle race inequality in the future.
Pepper Harow, BHA Local Campaigns Officer commented, “We have done extensive work on equality issues in recent years, including our input as a key stakeholder to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, our equality project and our work on the Equality Bill. Our expertise lies in the equality area of ‘religion or belief’ and how that area intersects with others such as race, ethnicity and gender.’
“While we welcome the ongoing commitment of Government to tackling such important issues as race inequalities, we do have some concerns about the conflation of ‘race’ with ‘faith’, where the term ‘faith communities’ is being used as shorthand for ‘minority ethnic communities’. This inaccurate use of terminology can lead to public policies treating ‘faith’ and ‘race’ as one and the same, when in fact they are quite distinct categories with different issues and will often need different policies to tackle discrimination and inequality.”
She continued, “For us, when seeking to tackle inequalities on grounds of religion or belief, it is really important not to use the word ‘faith’, because that excludes non-religious people. In the context of this consultation, using the words ‘faith’ and ‘race’ interchangeably denies that many people within black and minority ethnic communities are non-religious, which is problematic in principle and in practice. We have made that clear in our response and also pointed out that government must examine the effect of such policies on both religious and non-religious people.”
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For further comment or information, contact Pepper Harow on 020 7462 4992.
You can read Communities and Local Government’s Race Strategy Discussion Document here.
You can read the BHA’s response here.
The British Humanist Association is the national charity representing and supporting the interests of ethically concerned, non-religious people in the UK. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief, and for a secular state.