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Analysis: Is 'Political Blackness' gone for good?

31/10/2022

Is 'Political Blackness' gone for good?

BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, Is 'Political Blackness' gone for good?

Mobeen Azhar asks what’s next after 'political blackness' and 'BAME'?

Mobeen Azhar finds out if we still need a collective term for Britain’s ethnic minorities.

Over the decades, a string of umbrella terms and acronyms have been used in the UK to describe people who aren’t white. “Politically Black”, Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME), ethnic minorities, or people of colour. 

Virtually all of them have been rejected by the people they describe, but is there still value in a collective term for Britain’s ethnic minorities? Mobeen Azhar hears stories of solidarity and schism between different groups in modern Britain to find out whether any sense of unity still exists and whether we need a new label.

Contributors:

Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich South
Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War on Want
Professor Jason Arday, Professor of Sociology of Education, University of Glasgow
Ada Akpala, writer and podcaster
Dr Rakib Ehsan, research analyst specialising in social integration and community relations
Dr Lisa Palmer, Deputy Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University
Sunder Katwala, Director, British Future

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer: Dan Hardoon
Editor: Clare Fordham
Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Helena Warwick-Cross

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Is 'Political Blackness' gone for good?

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