'Ethnic minorities' - as discredited a term as 'coloureds' ?

Matthew Parris, a writer I admire, made a good point in yesterday's 'Times', that the term 'ethnic minorities' is used in the UK as an 'acceptable' way of grouping together all those who are non-white. In that way, he argued, it is a 'nice' way of justifying the compulsion to group all non white Britons in one statistical bag. Because it is a twee and convenient tool of government and the media it is just as offensive, in a covert sense, as 'coloureds'

After all when used to describe social problems here it doesn't usually refer to the Poles, Alabanians, Romanians, Australians and other groups of caucasian racial type who live here but to the Afro Caribbeans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and black Africans who make up maybe 10% of the population of our inner cities. It is a term based on colour and not on genuine ethnic diversity.





And so Parris is right. It makes little sense, except as a polite tool to avoid accusations of racism, to continue to encourage the use of this term. The needs of people from an Afro Caribbean culture are vastly different from those from the Asian sub continent - and within that area, different religions and cultural observations apply and thus different requirements for each community.

As part and parcel of nation building, lets start calling all these people British and stop this breakdown into whites and others no matter how neatly we parcel it up. Certainly if something report worthy happens which for which a person's cultural background plays an important part then its probably fair to mention it in the press.

I would like to see Government documents stop referring to our 'ethnic minorities' as a catch all and either, if it is deemed necessary, pinpoint the culture to which the report refers or better still, refer to us all as 'British'