CRE
Someone I know has a letter in today’s Guardian about Trevor Philips’ attack on separatism:
His comments amount to blaming the victims of racism, allowing a volley of attacks against multiculturalism, in the context where, 30 years on from the Race Relations Act which established the Commission for Racial Equality, this body will not exist while racism still does. This is the real issue against which Phillips should speak out.
Maybe I’m being a muppet (and of course I don’t have personal experience of racism), but I don’t understand what the problem with the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights is. At the moment we have a nonsensical system whereby two institutions struggle to advise a black woman who has experienced discrimination, and lesbian and gay people have no institutional support for anti-discrimination cases at all. Yes, the money and the structure need to be right, but the principle is eminently sensible. Of course I will miss the Equal Opportunities Commission’s straightforward advocacy of women’s rights, but the benefits of integration will be far greater than the losses.
I think that Trevor is irked because he has been so confrontational to the current government that he has zip chance of being appointed as Chief Exec of the new body.