Until society confronts institutional and cultural racism, such inequalities will be immune to changes in the law
What’s in a name? A great deal it would seem, including perhaps a diminished chance of being shortlisted for a job, offered a university place, or a rental property if you have an ethnic or racial minority background. Even a nursery place can hang in the balance, as Scotland’s secretary for health and sport, Humza Yousaf, recently discovered: he suspects that an application for his two-year-old daughter was denied by a nursery in Dundee on discriminatory grounds. (The nursery in question has denied the allegation.)
To researchers and activists who continually identify the drivers of racial inequality, and who are long accustomed to the obfuscation that stymies change, this would not come as news. What’s striking is that, despite legislation designed to eliminate such inequalities, they persist. And they will continue to, until white-majority societies confront the institutional and cultural factors that make them possible.