This just kicks the problem further upstream ignoring, for example, the possibility that more black children are indeed educationally subnormal.
Lord Sewell: I tried to warn Britain about the curse of identity politics
Racial disparity is not the same as racism. Conflating them is devastating for public policy
"Valdo Calocane is a black man with a long history of severe mental illness. But during a clinical assessment, some years ago, professionals discussed research showing that young black men are disproportionately detained under mental health legislation in Britain.
And after deliberation, they decided compulsory detention might be inappropriate for Calocane. Community monitoring, they concluded, would be a “safe and reasonable alternative”.
It wasn’t. On June 13, 2023, Calocane fatally stabbed three people in Nottingham: students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and a 65-year-old school caretaker named Ian Coates.
A psychotic man who should have been detained for his mental illness was released into the world; and three innocent people died. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that ideology – not public safety – played some role in shaping the ultimately fatal decision to release him.
This tragedy could have been avoided. Five years ago this month, and two years before the Nottingham murders, Boris Johnson’s government published the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, which I chaired. The central argument was simple but proved controversial to many: racial disparities are not automatically evidence of racism.
Disparity and discrimination are not the same thing. That black men are more likely to be detained, for example, should not be seen as evidence of racism.
If data shows that one racial group is over-represented in a particular outcome, there may be many explanations – culture, history, geography, class, family structure, health patterns, or institutional practice. The question is not whether disparities exist, but why.
That distinction matters enormously. If disparities are automatically interpreted as racism, then institutions begin to operate under intense pressure to avoid outcomes that might look unequal – even when the unequal outcome might actually be the correct professional judgment. The risk is that evidence is replaced by moral signalling.
Mental health was one of the clearest examples we identified. Activists often point to the disproportionate detention of black men under the Mental Health Act as evidence of systemic racism. But the evidence suggested something more complex: a deep mistrust of mental health services within some communities.
That mistrust has historical roots. In the 1960s, black children were disproportionately labelled “educationally sub-normal” and sent to special schools. The suspicion of institutions did not appear out of thin air. For many families, these experiences created a generational narrative that public services were not neutral providers of care but agents of discrimination.
But today the pattern we see is different: too many young black men engage with mental health services far too late, often when they are already in crisis. Families frequently avoid the system until a situation becomes dangerous.
The result is a tragic cycle. When intervention finally occurs, it often happens in emergency conditions. Police may be involved. Compulsory detention becomes more likely. The statistics then appear to confirm the narrative of discrimination, even though the underlying causes may lie earlier in the chain of events.
That is not the product of a racist conspiracy within psychiatry. It is the result of delayed engagement, untreated illness and a mistrust of institutions.
Yet, in recent years, another force has begun to influence how professionals interpret these disparities: the moral pressure of identity politics.
A new orthodoxy
Across public institutions, a powerful new orthodoxy has taken hold. Racial inequality is assumed to be the product of systemic racism, unless proven otherwise. Any attempt to question this assumption risks accusations of insensitivity or worse.
The incentive structure is clear: it is far safer professionally to err on the side of avoiding any action that might appear discriminatory.
This dynamic is often described as “white guilt” – a pervasive anxiety among institutions, particularly those led by white professionals, that they might be perpetuating racial injustice. That anxiety can lead to overcorrection.
White guilt does not always appear in crude or obvious forms. It often manifests subtly, through cautious decision-making, hesitancy, and a reluctance to exercise authority in situations where race might later be invoked as an explanation. Professionals become acutely aware that any decision affecting a minority individual could be scrutinised through the lens of discrimination.
The result is a kind of institutional paralysis. Instead of asking “what is the safest decision based on clinical evidence?”, decision-makers may also ask, consciously or unconsciously, “how will this decision look through the prism of race?”
When that calculation enters the room, the quality of judgment inevitably changes.
This tragic story in Nottingham makes me angry because our report tried to challenge exactly this kind of thinking. We argued that professionals must not allow ideological assumptions about racism to distort clinical judgment. But the reaction to our work was ferocious.
Activist groups, public sector unions and parts of the corporate world denounced the report. Media outlets – terrified of being labelled racist – amplified the outrage. Several of my fellow commissioners, most of whom were themselves from ethnic minority backgrounds, were vilified online and professionally punished.
The cancellation reached absurd heights in March 2022 when the University of Nottingham, where I earned my PhD, rescinded an honorary doctorate it had awarded me for my work in education. They said the report was too controversial.
The irony is hard to miss. Calocane was also a Nottingham student. It was there that he first experienced hallucinations.
If the progressive gatekeepers around him had read our report with an open mind, they might have found a warning about politically distorted practice in mental health services. Perhaps then he would have been detained and three people would still be alive.
The passage activists hated most was our call for community responsibility:
“The Commission”, we wrote, “does not believe the evidence supports claims of discrimination within psychiatry. The challenge is convincing vulnerable people in ethnic minorities that mental healthcare is neither a threat nor a punishment, but something genuinely helpful.”
For some critics, even raising the possibility of cultural or community factors was unacceptable. The prevailing narrative demanded that institutions bear primary responsibility for disparities.
But ignoring cultural factors helps nobody. If mistrust of services delays treatment, then addressing that mistrust is essential. Pretending the problem lies elsewhere simply prolongs the suffering.
In fact, attitudes are slowly changing. Increasing numbers of patients are recognising their vulnerability and seeking help earlier – sometimes even requesting sectioning themselves.
British schools are not institutionally racist
Our report applied the same forensic analysis we applied to psychiatry across other fields, from education to employment. And again, in many cases, disparities had more to do with other factors – like class, geography and family stability – than race.
Critics said we were too optimistic. They insisted racism seeped into every pore of British society.
But what we exposed was something else: Britain had drunk deeply from the dangerous elixir of identity politics.
Across academia, politics and civil society, moral status became tied to racial victimhood. If you were black, it was implied, the system must be against you. If you were white, you were assumed to benefit from invisible privilege.
This framework reshaped public debate. Complex social problems were compressed into a simple moral narrative of oppressors and oppressed. The concept of white guilt became a powerful cultural force, encouraging institutions to apologise for historical injustices and scrutinise every disparity for evidence of prejudice.
But the danger of this mindset is that it can blind us to other realities. When we examined outcomes across groups, we found something that disrupted the narrative: the white working class is often doing worst of all.
Nowhere is this clearer than in education. According to data published last year, just 34 per cent of white British boys on free school meals reached the expected GCSE standard in English and maths. Among black Caribbean boys on free school meals it was 35 per cent. But among black African boys it was 59 per cent and for Chinese boys it was 82 per cent.
These figures challenge the idea that racial identity alone determines disadvantage. They suggest that class, family stability and local environment may be more powerful predictors of life outcomes.
Family structure, in particular, is one of the strongest predictors of success.
Only two in 10 poor white children live with married parents today, compared with almost six in 10 among poor children in non-white families. Growing up in a stable two-parent household predicts life chances more strongly than many of the characteristics dominating modern equality debates.
For years, pointing this out was treated as politically dangerous. To discuss family breakdown risked accusations of “blaming the victim”. But ignoring such realities helps no one – least of all the children growing up within them.
Five years ago, saying this publicly could get you branded a racist. Today even Labour ministers acknowledge it. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has spoken openly about the need for targeted programmes for poor white boys.
That shift is one of the report’s quiet legacies. The goal was never to deny racism where it exists. Racism does occur, and it should be confronted wherever it appears. But reducing every disparity to racism creates a distorted understanding of society – and bad policy decisions.
The purpose of the Commission was to bring evidence back into the centre of the debate. To remind policymakers that social problems rarely have single causes. And to argue that communities themselves must play a role in solving the challenges they face.
The deeper problem we identified was cultural: a political environment in which identity had replaced analysis. When racial identity becomes the primary lens through which all outcomes are judged, evidence struggles to compete with ideology.
Over the last five years we have seen the political consequences of this vacuum. Parties such as Reform UK have gained traction by speaking to voters who feel ignored by elite debates about race and privilege.
The Commission warned this could happen. When mainstream politics refuses to discuss uncomfortable truths, others will step in to fill the silence.
We also argued for a school curriculum that celebrated Britain’s intellectual and cultural achievements rather than treating the nation primarily as a story of oppression. A balanced curriculum should acknowledge historical injustice while also recognising the writers, scientists and inventors who shaped modern Britain.
As a junior minister, Kemi Badenoch deserves credit for fighting to keep the spirit of the report alive, even when some senior figures seemed hesitant. She understood that the Commission was not about denying racism but defending evidence-based policymaking.
That principle matters more than ever today. Because when identity politics replaces evidence, the consequences are not just intellectual. Sometimes they are deadly.
