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Anti-racism protests in London
Photo: Frank Augstein / AP
A commission hired by the UK government has given the country excellent credentials for ethnic minority equality.
Other countries with a white majority population in Europe and elsewhere should follow this example, said a statement accompanying the report, which was presented on Wednesday.
"Put simply, we no longer see Britain in which the system is deliberately directed against ethnic minorities," it said in the introduction.
The charge that racism is still institutionally anchored in Great Britain does not stand up to a verification of the facts, writes the responsible "Race and Ethnic Disparities Commission".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the report "important work".
Criticism from scientists and politicians
The opposition and civil rights activists, however, sharply criticized the study.
Labor leader Keir Starmer and Halima Begum, head of the Runnymede Trust, a think tank for equality issues, spoke of a whitewash.
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Protests in London: "Churchill was a racist"
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Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at the University of Birmingham, described the report as a government "public relations" campaign that contradicts the evidence.
"That gives people a justification for saying we don't have to do anything, we don't have to worry," Andrews said in an interview with the UK news agency PA.
Black Labor MP David Lammy called the report "an insult to anyone who experiences institutional racism in this country."
Since Meghan's interview, there has been an increasing discussion of racism in Great Britain
Johnson commissioned the study after the protests against racism by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Last summer tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Great Britain after the killing of the African American George Floyd in a police operation in the United States.
There, the discussion about racism in society has recently come to the fore through the allegations of Prince Harry's wife Meghan against the royal family.
According to the report, various minorities in the UK are now more successful than the average white majority in achieving formal educational goals.
This applies, for example, to students with roots from India, Bangladesh and Africa.
Only children with Caribbean roots do worse on average than their white classmates.
Meghan and Harry in London (archive image)
Photo: VICTORIA JONES / AFP
The country has also made great strides in the workplace.
The wage gap between the white majority population and ethnic minorities is now only 2.3 percent, and there is no longer any significant difference among those under 30, according to the report.
One of the findings of the study was that certain strata within the white majority population were very much stuck in their social status.
The Commission therefore called for compensatory measures to focus less on individual ethnic groups in the future.
Instead, more work should be done to remove obstacles for everyone.
slü / dpa / Reuters
