TRIGGERnometry - Dr Tony Sewell Defends Controversial Race Report

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

Dr Tony Sewell was the chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, published in March 2021. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. A fascinating guest we have for you today. He was the chair of the commission which produced the Race and Disparities Report. Dr. Tony So welcome back to Trichonometry. Hi, hi. It's nice to come back again after my debut. Yes. Some years ago. Your debut was a couple of years ago and in rather more relaxed circumstances. Yeah, you guys have gone up in the world since then. So have you, Tony.

Yeah, well, you know, it's been of an interesting ride since I last saw you, you know. It has. I mean, you are an education consultant. That's your thing. Generating genius is the charity. That's what we talked about last time. And since then, the government asked you to produce a report on racial disparities in the UK. You produced the report.

We had one of your commissioners, Mercy Muraki, on the show. show to talk about it. But we were keen to have you back, and thank you for coming back to talk to us. What's it been like for you, first of all, just on an individual level? Because that report was not that well received in some quarters. Well, that means he's doing quite well then if he's not there. No, I mean, the people who need to receive it at the government. Yeah.

And I think that we want them to sort of obviously try to put all of the recommendations in place. but we're not a patsy for government. I mean, and they're going to find those recommendations tough and challenging. For me, I must admit, I think in terms of trying to explain what happened over that period, I think the misunderstanding might be one way of looking at it. But I do think that, you know, one of the interesting things about that is that I don't know how many people actually read that report. I mean, who reads reports in the end?

And it's quite interesting that, you know, government commissions lots of these things, but the attention this had was interesting. And obviously it did happen as, you know, I mean, stimulated by the George Floyd murder. But then it was more than that because it was about the UK and what happened here. I would say that what happened here was an interim,

I mean, in terms of what we were trying to do, first of all, before even get into the reaction, I mean, the reaction was, I would disagree with you. I don't think it was actually all bad. I think what happened was that there were a lot of people when they did read it, liked it, yeah, and were very supportive of it. So we have that.

But yes, people misunderstood it. And I think that was the thing. And why they misunderstood it was really going back to my debut, really, with you. And they thought that what they had in terms of myself, of my commissioners was a bunch of people who were just basically, you know, kind of, I don't know, sort of supporters of the Tory party, just basically Boris's mates or whatever. And he just cobbled together a few people and they were going to write a report for him

and he was going to go home and be happy, you know. And actually, if they read the report, what they've missed was the complete opposite happened. And so in effect, what actually happened was that, People responded to what they read in the Guardian or in the other papers, but they didn't actually read the report. So, for example, people say, oh, I don't like that report, or they're denying racism or whatever, but they never read it. They just said that.

So you think, wow, are we in a world now where people are not even going to just look at the thing, you know, even, you know, some pages or some of the recommendations. The counter is yes, time of it. Well, you know what, I'm thinking, given that not every, you're right, not everybody reads reports or very few people do. There'll be people watching this who maybe you've got an open mind. They haven't read the report. They read some of the coverage.

They don't know what happened. What were some of the key findings and the key recommendations that you made? Well, let me tell you what really did stir up the problem for this. And why people didn't really think that they grasped it properly or they grasped it wrongly, was that we, first of all, we were looking at four. areas really education employment crime and policing and health right those are the four right from the outset we did say quite clearly in that report that there was persistent racism in the country we weren't denying that that came out straightway that'd be the first

interesting thing that came so that was one of the first findings that racism exists and it's alive but then what we did then was we said but you can't just understand racism in isolation it's connected to lots of other things so for example socioeconomic background becomes the key element here. And then, you know, you look at other things like the family, cultural factors, geography, where you live. And then what you do then is once you start looking at those other variables and also you bring in the white group into this,

because they actually happen to be human beings as well. And they're examined in the mix. Then you come out, you emerge with a report that basically says this, that overall, I mean, and this is sort of the key finding here, is that race disparities exist, but racism isn't the major driver for most of them, the major reason for most of them being there. So that's a kind of strange kind of tension, because you're saying that there's a racial disparity, but racism isn't the key element. What really is the key driver in all of this is your poverty, is your socioeconomic background.

That's what drives the whole area. And if you look at the, give you one particular group that doesn't fit in the whole kind of category. Also, the other thing is that you can't actually start, I mean, there's another finding, it's a pretty obvious one, you can't just lump everybody together. So for example, ethnic minority groups all lumped together.

So the experience of an Indian doctor in Harrow is a world away from a taxi driver in Bradford. You know what I mean? Yet, we categorise them as Asian. Yeah. You know. Well, these people are fighting a war back home, right?

But here, they're like one group. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, you know. And so we clearly, but one of the things that was quite interesting was, and the battle really in schools, from my own area, in education. And when we cut it and we said that people were saying, all these black boys are being excluded and all these black boys are doing so badly in school. But what do we mean by black? Because once we cut it and we said, right, let's split Black Caribbean and Black African.

And then there was a world of difference. I mean, in terms of exclusion rates, black African boys were, you know, hardly excluded. I think like seven in 10,000 were being excluded for African boys. Whereas Caribbean was 25 in 10,000. A huge difference. And when it came to the exam results, African boys. ways were, I would say in terms of, we could progress eight in school and GCSE results, way ahead. In fact, they were way ahead of white groups as well, yeah? And Caribbean groups were

worse than white groups in terms of some of the outcomes. So you say, here's a racial disparity. You can't no longer talk about black boys as a whole because they're not the same. And let's be honest, these same boys are in the same classroom. They come from the same. same estates, they're in front of the same white teacher, yet these results are diverging in different directions. So you cannot, you no longer can say that the reason for black boys underachieving in school is teacher racism, you see, you have to go somewhere else to find the answer. And where we landed it was to do with, I mean, a couple of things, really. You can see it. It's landed in the poverty issues, yeah, but it's also landed in the family.

issues and some cultural issues as well. So for example, if you were to then look at some data around, I mean, I want to put a health check on what I say here because I do not think it's family style at all or single mothers to blame. And people will keep saying this. I don't, but I just think we have a recommendation around that as well. But if you just look at how those families are set up, I mean, 63% of the Black Caribbean, my communities, you know, in inverted commas, are from loan parents, 63%. The African is 40 and Indian is 6. Then you only have to, the comments,

you only have to put those issues together in terms of poverty. You know, and it's not that every loan parent is poor, but the vast majority of them are, in a significant amount, are because of the situation you're in. And it's not to say you shouldn't be a single parent, but what we should then do is, as the commissioners recommend resources for you. So what we were findings,

in terms of findings then, that's the key thing. You just, the thing's complex. You can't just go out there and say, here is this race disparity equals racism. Yeah. The other thing,

and I think this is probably the key driver, geography, where you live. And we saw this in this Hartley-Paul election and we saw recently. Of the, of the neighborhood, Of the 20 big poor neighborhoods that we have around the country, 19 of them are in the north, the poorest, right?

And obviously, a majority of that is white populations, yeah, in the poorest. There's also some on the South Coast as well, but the majority of them are in the north. The other thing with that is that London and the Southeast comprise of, when it comes to social mobility, the highest mobility rates are happening in London and the Southeast. So, you know, if you're a Bangladeshi girl in Tower Hamlets, you're flying in terms of exam results. If you're a Bangladeshi girl in Bradford, you're nearly at the bottom of the pecking order.

So where you live in the UK is a key determinant. So what people didn't want to hear was that message that this thing is complicated. they wanted us to say look don't give us any of this kind of nonsense it's racism that is the thing that's driving this thing and I'll come on to that in a minute but but we couldn't just say that because the evidence didn't take us there

you know you go where the evidence the evidence took us to somewhere which was more complicated and needed more sophisticated answers now in our world of identity politics. If you come up with anything that's complicated like this or say that it's different variables, you can only be one thing. You're either you're ever in the race camp or you're out of it. Yeah? And that's it. And if you're out of it, that means you're a race denier, you're a Judas, you've betrayed your race, whatever. Now, you know, to me, I think there's some links in America

here. And I was thinking of this the other day. We're not the same as America. And we do import some of the things that are bad there in terms of our thinking. But, I think African-Americans and black, I think it's emerged out of here, the group that looks like it's like an equivalent to an African-American is my community, Black Caribbean. And that is the thing that sticks out here. And people say, oh, you're dividing all people and you're dividing black from white. But the data shows, the data is showing all these elements to be the truth. And we're talking about it. And why do you think it's something as simple as the fact that there are,

that Black Caribbean, especially Black Caribbean boys, are less likely to grow up with a dad in their house? And then the impact that that has? I'm going to say, no. I'm going to throw you with that because people have associated me with trying to explain away these problems by landing it on Black women as it well. And I don't think it's there.

I don't think the problem is there. I think when we cut this, it's a factor. I'm not denying that in terms of poverty. But that would be a factor for single white women in Hartlepool. You know, it's a factor for everybody. What I think goes wrong is the history of that community. What came up in our kind of findings was this issue of trust. Now, if you go back to like the wind rush pitch,

And then there was, when I grew up, it was in the sort of 70s. That was kind of a rebel period with the police. And those two kind of periods of, I would say, quite heavy trauma for a community. Yeah. Because if you look, if you can imagine it, you come all away from Jamaica or Trinidad or Barbados. No, you've been begged to come over. People have asked you to come here, yeah. And then you land here, you get all this crap.

You know, immediately, no, don't come here. Don't go back home. but you've been asked to come here. I mean, it's really interesting about migration. This must be, this set of people must be, historically for Britain. Enoch Powell went on a campaign to the Caribbean and begged people to come over there to Britain. One of the things that was interesting,

when my parents came here, and this isn't going to be dynamics about poverty, is that they were surprised to see how poor white people were. They were shocked, because they thought all white people were rich. So that thing was stung in their heads. And I think that whole issue goes on about, it's translated to this horrible word called white privilege.

Because they still think that nothing bad could happen to white people. Somehow they're blessed with this kind of thing of privilege from the gods or so. And I do think that resonates. So you come into the country and you get this bad experience. Then your kids get crap in school as well. you know, and the police and all of that. So you have a community that looks very much like an African-American one as well. It looks like it's one that's out of, you know,

completely out of outside of the society because it has this mental thing about we can't trust it at all. And this you have the anti-VAC thing, which is interesting because, oh, we can't trust it because we can't trust anything that the government gives because they're giving it for free. And that couldn't be right, you know. And so there's that, there's that. that kind of thing. Now, you compare that to the more recent arrived sort of West African,

somewhere from Nigeria. And we call it immigrant optimism that comes in and just see, well, they haven't got all that historic baggage at all. They just come in and say, wow, right, free education. Wow. Let's go for it. Teachers, pens, books, things that you have to pay for back home or wherever is all free, you know. And you get paid. I mean, in my day, when, you know, they actually paid you to go to university. I mean, it's a bit different now. But, you know, so all these resources are there for you. And so the mentality is go for it.

And so those young people from those African backgrounds will have parents and people around them saying, look, you've got, there is no history here. Just work hard and do well. And they are, and they are doing well. Yeah. Hey, Francis. Do you think it's cool that the,

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and get three extra months for free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-E-E-S-V-E. PN.com slash trigger to learn more. Tony, isn't there another factor here, though, as well, which people who are critics of yours would want to talk about a lot, which is the legacy of slavery. The Afro-Caribbean community are, by definition, descended from slaves who were taken to North America and the Caribbean, right?

Whereas a West African probably wasn't descended. And so that generational disadvantage, the legacy of it... I don't buy that. You don't buy that? No, no, no. Here's the thing. I spend half of my life in Jamaica. I'm lucky I have the two places to go to. So I'll be whizzing off soon away from this cold place. It's getting warm now. So one of the interesting things is about class and about class and poverty. If you look at the migration to America from, say, like Jamaica, and you go to the unit, there's a university called the University of West Indies, 80% of the graduates don't stay. You know, once they've got their degree. degrees, they go to the US. Those graduates will, and people professionally as well, will go in and they occupy top

jobs in America. So what you've got is a Caribbean middle class that's, they're the doctors, they're the lecturers, I mean, more than lectures, professors, they're running things, you know. And so you've got a solid black middle class that's been going to America. all the time. They haven't been coming here. What happened here was basically, you know, people came here in the 1950s. They were poorer and stayed poor-ish, yeah, and was linked, really, to the white working class that was here. And that's been, it's the socioeconomic issue.

And the way they were treated when they arrived. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Whereas, in fact, it's a quite interesting tension now. It's quite interesting when you compare what goes on towards the US from the Caribbean compared to what went on migration towards the UK. African-Americans sometimes are quite resentful of Caribbean. They look at them as almost like the elite, almost like you would say, like, for example, the Indian population here, for example. They looked at as an elite-ish kind of proposition over there.

So the slavery thing is interesting. I'm not saying it's a factor, but you can see that what's, What is driving it, I think, is how you then come into a country, how you migrate into a country, and then how, if you are going to be socially mobile inside that country. What happened to my community is we just got stuck. We just got stuck with alongside, without being, you know, negative here, with the rest of the white working class that we're here as well.

We just got stuck here. And I think that, yes, you could talk about there was some more privilege for those white working class people, but essentially they were already stuck as well. They were stuck. So slavery is a factor, but it's not the driver here. It's always about, so there is something inside Britain about how it allows people to actually move through the gears fast. And how you can get stuck in this. And what are the reasons were?

school system was one of the reasons why we got so stuck, because it operated on a level where if you didn't pass your 11 plus or whatever. I mean, it happens in the Caribbean as well. Or, you know, you were stuck in these secondary schools. I was stuck in one of those as well. And to get out of those things was hard, you know. And then it had, I mean, when I went to university, 5% of the population from poor backgrounds went to university.

Only five. It was a middle class kind of, you know, kind of, you know, provision. It wasn't for poor people. Only recently we've been going to university in big numbers since Blair opened it up. So we've got, so the issues, and this is what's comes back to the issue about my report, was that what was dangerous for me in the report and why I've been the black Satan, as it were, oh, you're like the black Christ on the cross, wherever I am, was that I dare, dared bring class into this man. I dared bring family and all these other elements into the

race thing. Because all they wanted to see here was pure race. And they wanted the thing. They wanted to run from slavery right the way through to racism. And it's just not that, it's not that simple. You see. You see, and it's a very, very good point. You're saying it's not that simple. Why do you think we're just constantly obsessed with wanting an easy solution to complex problems? Because we don't want solutions. You see, the people inside, what's actually happened here is that there are people who actually don't want, be strange, but don't want solutions, you see. Somehow it's, the perpetuation of the problem actually suits them. It's a really strange mentality. Because when you ask them, and this is the thing about the report that I think people don't like, is the 24 recommendations are

progressive, they're radical, yeah, and they're about solutions. Give us a flavor, Tony, again, for people who haven't read the report, what are some of the key recommendations? Well, the first one to kick off, which is the one that's interesting, is that we ask the Equalityies and Human Rights Commission, who are the police, really, for racism, the agency that deals with all of that. We want them to be more robust and have more powers. So that was the first recommendation. And then we said on top of that that you've got to do with the online racism that's going on as well, that Marcus Ratchford and all these other people are talking about. Now, where, and I asked both of you, did a report that was meant to be

on race and ethnic disparity recommending that the agency that actually does deal with racism has more powers and that the government have got to deal with online racism. That is the first recommendation. How did that come to be marked as denying racism? You know, where did, they lost their heads. And what I think is happening, that's one recommendation. But we didn't stop there. We went after the robots as well, because the AI and artificial intelligence,

all the kinds of things that you would do in terms of coding that could be biased. We asked the government look into that. make some changes, like insurance, things like that, how you calculate all these other things. We wanted that whole, so that's deep-seated kind of racism you're going after there. So when people, we get, that's a recommendation too, and I can keep going, yeah? I mean, I'll come to a couple in a minute, but if you just pick up those two, yeah, I suggest what happened here was that we caught friendly fire and it was unfriendly. if you see what I mean.

So the people who thought, it's come back, that in fact the recommendations were going to be soft or whatever, didn't know or didn't want to know that the first recommendation that came out was about anti-racism. It was about that. So what this government's got to do,

this is why I don't really understand where the criticism could have come from. Because, you know, the Labour Party would love this. You know, it's for them. You have a recommendation that's saying that that agency has got to be tougher, have more resources, go after one. And already the government are doing it because they're changing the law now. But now we're going to have to have Facebook.

We're going to have to have Twitter. Really be serious about this. Otherwise, they're going to get fined heavily. Yeah? And so that's what we recommended. Hold on Tony. But aren't you being a bit naive, if you don't mind me saying so, about why people were critical because they were critical

because they wanted you to come out and say the country is institutionally racist, the police are all racist, the education system is racist, employers are all racist, because that's the worldview that they already have and they wanted you to confirm that and when you didn't,

that's why they got angry. I think you've got the world record for racist in one question. But, you know, you go with the evidence. I've painted a more complex question. But these people don't go with the, evidence. Yeah. I mean, I've painted a more nuanced picture than that. Yeah. And you have to

look, it doesn't solve the problems you see. For example, if you there is racism in the police and that and that's a fact and we've got strong recommendations for that. But you can't then just say that if you're going to deal with the issue of the family, you have to have recommendations that's really specific for that and deal with that and not not not kind of dodge it because in the end you can just say okay let's have let's let's

do more unconscious bias training in schools if you think all teachers are racist that will try that it'll complete waste of time yeah because the problem isn't with the with the teachers in that regard that the issue is with the capacity of the family to deal with some of these problems and what so what we did we brought out a recommendation that said we want and this is a very strong one. Government will think hard about that. We want a task force for the family. It's going to give so in the end what will happen is

in real terms those African Caribbean mothers or loan parents will get, will actually get more resources as a result of this report. I mean it's just as flatline as that. They will get more help

for that. But we won't say oh we're going to have more trainers coming to teach and tell them how try and pull out the racism out of their heads or something. I don't know, but that's not working. You know, that's not, because that's not where the problem lies. Because African children are just doing really well in that system and flourishing in it. And so you just have to go where the evidence takes you.

It's not about bias or, and you're right, those things that people wanted you to say and didn't say. That's the thing, you know. And they really didn't want a complex nuance thing about this. They just wanted just you to yell, you know, the world is racist. And a lot of companies went along with this as well. And they kind of just, because it suited them to kind of say, well, look, we will put our George Floyd kind of thing on our black power thing on our kind of logo tomorrow. And they'll go back and do the same practice because black people are not progressing in those organizations either. You see.

So it doesn't matter how kind of, you know, you put out these gestures. It doesn't make any different. Because the real issue around progression as well in those companies, you could argue, well, you know, okay, is it racism that stopping those people progressing? Or there's something else that's going on. And then you look at back to what I said about this history of this group and what happens in there and how you feel in a sense, do I belong here? Do I really belong here? And then if the opportunity is there,

are you empowering those people to progress rather than sticking labels on an organisation and saying you are this or you are that? When in fact the real problem is, part of the problem could be about getting those people to really now begin to think about how can I have the confidence to go through this difficult organisation.

And I think that that really is the problem. But it's also as well, Tony. I mean, let's be fair, Winrosse did a tremendous amount of damage to particularly Caribbean people's trust in the government. Do you not think? It was just another example for them of them being let down by the government.

And it's still happening now. Yeah, I agree. And I think that what you're going to do is you've got to not put people, I mean, one of the things in the report that I think was really good at is that it didn't only just land it on one, area, and this is one of the things that people think,

oh, you're only on this side and you don't look at the other argument. And because of its nuance and complex, racism exists, so we're not saying it's not an element, and we're not saying that teachers aren't racist either. But you have to look at where it lands. So when Russia is a key

aspect of it in terms of something that went wrong and something that definitely has elements of racism in there. But even there, you see, what What's sad about the wind rush is that it only is known for the fact that for now, for a legacy, this was the thing where people got ripped off.

It's not known for the rich legacy of Caribbean people. It's not labelled with that. So again, we've got to try and think of another way of getting some balance there because it isn't only about those people getting ripped off. It's also about the contributions of my parents. generations are positive ones, you see. So, yes, but you are right. And what you've got to do is almost go down a twin track with this and say there are other nuanced issues that you've got to deal with and you've also got to deal with the institution. And that's why we've put these

recommendations out for right, the number one is the body that polices this thing is going to get fully loaded. You know, I mean, you cannot, I mean, anybody's seen that. first recommendation. What on earth, why are these people jumping up in that? You know, that's, that's a key recommendation for what you're talking about. So let's talk about policing, because one of the things I took away from our first interview with you is how balanced you are as you are now. You were then. And you talked about your own experience growing up in this country when, you know, a black man had committed a crime. Suddenly everybody within a, you know, an area was being arrested or stopped by the police.

So, you know, and we know friends. We've got friends in comedy. or whatever, who'll talk about by the time I was 25, I'd been stopped by the police 15, 20 times. So what were some of your findings and some of your resulting recommendations in that area, which I think is a concern to a lot of people? Yeah, I mean, the policing one was an interesting one because what we did that, that was really about trust.

And again, coming back to this community, it's not that African people aren't going to get stopped as well, but that trust element for a community along the years, especially in the 70s, the police have, you know, got to do a lot of catching up. And so what we found was that the building of that trust was needed. So what you needed to do really was give the community a sense that the police was a service rather than a force. And they were actually part of, you know, the policing themselves, you know.

There are some issues, though, about how you do that. So we came up with safeguarding task force, which was a kind of safeguarding group, which was this sort of, it's a group that actually can hold the police commissioners, can hold the, you know, those who are in the top management of police. They come to that group and they have to then regularly explain how they're doing what their operations are. So the community itself has a power over that group. And that was key. But we wanted to find very practical recommendations, not theoretical ones. One of the ones also, we insisted, is that the police turn on the video that they have, the body cams, yeah.

And that, in fact, that would be compulsory. Because at the moment, it seems to be like it's voluntary. Oh, I forgot to turn it on, gov. But you have to have it on all the time. And that's a key element in terms of people feeling secure about that interaction. I think the other one that is interesting is there's some of the training around police. And I've seen this in teaching as well, de-escalation training. You know, how you, you know, you go into that interaction that you have particularly with young people.

How do you make that better? So the training is going to be much more focused. The two radical ones, which the government will find hard but they're going for, and I think this is the one that people, again, are surprise when they see it, is we've insisted on what we call residency. This is to make the police more representative of the area that you're in. So, for example, at the moment we have a police force that is, particularly on the white side.

I mean, the Asian side's a bit more balanced. There's hardly any black people actually in London. The numbers are sort of really small at the moment. And so there's a 40,000 uplift that they've been now given. So to get more officers. So what we want, what we've directed is that the police officers have to come from the area that you live in. So if you're going to join the police, you're going to join them in your area. So in and that would, so for example, if you look at an area like Tottenham or Lambeth,

then we have to have police officers who live in that area joining. I mean, it's not exclusively, but they're, they're going to. will get now that's a significant change because that will mean that the actual force the complexion of the force will change because it will represent the communities that's radical um and um the met have really taken that up as a and they're going for 40 percent they're going to increase that and i know cressa the dick has said that she wants to do that so but we want across the country so it doesn't so don't get me wrong if you're in cornwall you know it doesn't mean that you have to find you know a thousand black officers in court.

But if you're in a situation, but if you're in Tottenham, which at the moment is, you know, you go out there or in Croydon, and probably 90% of the officers are white, and the community is 80% ethnic minority. It doesn't reflect that. So what we're saying is that that should change.

People have asked me, is that affirmative action backdoor? No, but it's, It's actually looking at the skill set of that community and saying that it should reflect that. But we don't stop there. One of the other radical ones is to do with the possession of class B drugs. Now, what's actually happened is that because black communities are over-policed,

when those police officers go on looking for, say, knives or whatever, the issue is that... Tony, can I just stop you there? It's a very important point you're making, but I just want to... I'm listening to you through the eyes of a critic to some extent, and I want to say, well, you say they're over-policed. Why are they over-policed?

Well, this is it. They're over-policed because we have a situation where 24 times more likely to die, really, of homicide. Black males are likely to be victims of... of homicide compared to their white counterparts. So it's 24 times more as a black man. You're likely to die of homicide or homicide to death. But I mean, we're talking really about a knife crime.

They're talking about a murder. Yeah? And I say that with hesitancy. But that's it, 24 times more than any other group. It's probably the most kind of, you know, for us, in terms of findings, we were almost in tears with that one. Because why we were moved by that was nobody who cares.

And I say that, and I don't say that flippantly. I think that we've reached a point with knife crime at 21, one community, one set of ethnicity, 24 times getting homicide compared to the majority, compared to the white population. Nobody really cares. And I say that because we've reached a kind of point now where we're fairly indifferent about another black youth dying of knife crime. We just say, well, you know, we just expect.

Here's where the indifference gets even more interesting. In London, when you hear about a knife crime, you automatically think it's a black person, two black kids doing it. You don't even think twice. You don't think it could be a white person. You just think everybody in the newsroom, everybody thinks, oh, it's going to be two black kids doing this. or a group for black kids on another one. And so we've reached a point of indifference in this

that's unacceptable. Why is it, Tony, that, and I agree with you, like, you know, when I was a teacher, I was a teacher in Eum, which has a huge gang problem. And I remember one of my students telling me that he was in trouble and he was going through a bit of former students and telling me that they were looking to remove him from one school to the next. And I said, are you happy about that, fresh start,

all the rest of it and he went, no, because they'll murder me. Why is it that we get more upset about some poor unfortunate soul being murdered in Minneapolis than we do about young black boys dying in our own city? I'm not going to be pushed in because I can see a headline coming here. And I'm not going to answer the question how you put it, right? Because I don't want journalists listening to this to try and, do a sneaky on me. Yeah.

Damn. Think of the clicks, Tony. Come on. Come on. Yeah. No. What I will say is what I said before about the fact that we've become, you know, kind of cold to this now because it's too close to home and we can't, we don't.

When it comes to solutions, you see. Yeah, we don't know what to do. That's the real truth. Yeah. We think there's nothing that can be done. That's right. That's right. And in a sense, it's that that's the,

problem here in a way that's as has become, and I've written about this before in the past, as you know, and it's become an issue for us that we can't, I mean, I mean, I'm more kind of worried, not so much about the solutions to it, but the fact that people just accept it. And you know who I'm really crossed with is the BBC? We will, everyone's having to go in them. Let's take another piece out of them now. And I think that their attitude towards, for example, what I've seen when it's been reported,

the way they report these things is interesting. Because there is a sense in which they're not delving into the reasons why. They're almost frightened to go there and talk about some of the community dynamics around this. And also my community is probably embarrassed by it. And also there's another thing. It's easier to, in a sense, it's all about devils, really,

to find that devil again in the white person and the white community or whatever it is or the white privilege. But when it comes home, it's just, you know, it's like, oh, what am I going to do? And then, so what they, what, what, I've heard some things that people put it on cuts,

you know, kind of cuts in terms of grants and things like that, you know, and austerity. People are trying to find, desperately trying to find different things to explain. You know, and it's not, I mean, actually, we've got some data that showed that actually knife crime was at its height when austerity was at the bottom, when laborer in power, and there was no austerity. And knife crime peaked. There is no relationship, really, between the two things.

So we come back to, well, there is a relationship, in one way. I'm kind of contradict myself. There's a relationship, yes, in terms of some poverty. And I think there is, but there's also another thing going on because you can't just lay on poverty alone. That has to be to do with maybe stuff in the family, maybe stuff also to do with some mental health issues. And I think also there are some cultural factors as well.

All of those things wrapped up. And in the police, when I interrupted you before, you were saying because the black community is over police, and you've now explained why, because there is this problem going on, right? Because of that, more people are stopped and therefore more people are found to have drugs and then people end up with criminal records.

Is that what you're doing? That's right. That's exactly what we've done. So in order to avoid that problem for, well, I say innocent, but certainly black kids who are just not involved in knife crime but get caught with possession, what we're saying, and it's a strong recommendation, and it's a radical one,

is that they should be diverted to something else in a sense of diversion activities, but not having a criminal record because that's the problem. You're getting so many black youngsters being caught in this problem. And see, it wouldn't happen to you if you were a student at Oxford University.

Right. Because you wouldn't be so over-policed. Yeah. So they wouldn't catch you with them. And they'd probably take more drugs than anybody. Yeah. Yeah? So it's a question of fairness.

So, and also, they would probably get better lawyers or whatever. And in the end, those kids, we don't want them to have a criminal record. So what we've asked to go down to health route, we want something, there's got to be a consequence. You can't just have to be possessed, because we're not going down decriminalisation, but we're saying that the consequence,

we hope, will not be criminal, you know, a criminal justice one in a sense, but it will be a health one. And obviously you have to admit your guilt. So in a sense, and the police have welcomed this, funny enough. They, you know, it wasn't just something. Of course, they don't want to run around locking up people have got a bag of weed in their pocket.

That's not what they sound up for. They can deal with that quickly and then move on to trying to find the real knives and the real criminals. I mean, there was some pushback on this. But we're not naive. We know that a lot of kids are out there with those bags of weed or whatever, and they're selling it. We do know that.

We're not naive. Keith Fraser, you know, over 30 years of policing, it was one of the commissioners. He understands all of that. However, we balance that with the idea that, you know, there is this, you know, kind of almost stream of kids going into the criminal justice system. And then once they're in there, then that's worse because they get caught up in other things. So that was a way of stopping it.

So look, you get to that one and you ask, where on earth did this backlash on the report come? Because so far, I've outlined some stuff that even a Labour government would sweat, on, you know. So again, I come back to this idea that they didn't, they gave us friendly fire because of who we were. They thought that we were, there was a, there was a preconception that they thought that this was going to be, we were just going to chuck the government some easy things to do and, and we were controlled by the government. In fact, we were fiercely independent. And we are giving them a hard to, you know, we've put something in here called the extended school day.

You know, that's going to cost millions of pounds. But the reason why we put the extended school day was to help those single parents. Because, you know, if you think about a single parent now, if she knows that her son, her daughter is going to have an extended school day,

that means they can do debating, they can do make films like you guys, they can do things that will help their social mobility in that extended time. Now, who's going to pay for that? You know, so these are interventionist things, dare I say, socialist things that are in the recommendation. The thing is as left as anything, you know. And so this is that, you can see my, sort of how kind of frustrated I am with it.

Because in a way, what they've done is they've sent a message to communities about something that is going to help them. and only because they didn't say it or whatever or they didn't read it or they didn't want to know they've made the thing negative when in fact what should be happening now is everybody should be getting behind these recommendations and really kind of pushing the government and making sure that they're going to put it in place

and do you sometimes get frustrated with people particularly on the Labour Party who purport to have those communities' interests at heart and then they do or say the examples that you've given and actually they're not helping their community. You see, this is where, again, I'm going to be very political here

and say that Harriet Harmon came on and she liked what we were doing. You know, maybe we hate it now. I don't know what she's going to say. But she was quite interesting. And people are, oh, Harriet Harmon. But she could see where this was going.

And what she really liked was giving the teeth to the equalities and Human Rights Commission, making them look like the old CRA, just go for racism, do, you know, get that online stuff stopped. So there clearly are people inside that party

that want to do things that are positive. But they've got themselves in a mess, and particularly with the Hartlepool thing as well, but they appear to not even like working class people. You know, it's a strange thing for a party, you know. Called Labor. Yeah, well, I'm not party political. I'm independent of that.

But I'm just saying that they, Here's where I think it's a good thing for Labor to do. If they were really kind of focused, what they should is get behind this report and really pushed the government and say, this is a really solid report, which you've commissioned, are you going to put these things in play?

So, yeah, that's... So for us, you know, that was where it is. But the policing thing is an interesting one. We should... If this report results in more... black and ethnic particularly more black police on the beat

going on there and actually also not on the beat but progressing in that force and coming up there and you know detectives and things like that they're there but they just need to be there

in more number you know and I think it's an interesting area for the community to it's not that you know black kids need to be policed by people who look like them but they've got to see somebody that looks like you

you know and and You know, the police want this to happen. The government wants it to happen. We're giving them a kick up the backside and saying, you've got to do it now. You've got to mandate this. You know, it's got to happen.

But it's also as well, the thing that I found very interesting was talking about stop and search. Yeah. Now, we've, we've, because of this thing, but the issue that we, some people are saying, you should, stop and search doesn't have any kind of, you know, positive outcome. It makes black youth.

kind of feel depressed and they're pressured by it and there's racism involved. We agree, all of these things happen. But on the day when, for example, there was a case where one poor kid was stabbed 48 times and if you come across that case by a bunch of couple of kids, 48 times, you know, and that lone parent or that may not be a lone parent, it could be, you know,

not that case. but the family or whoever's around that boy, they would want us to go off on that evening, that same night, and find those knives and find those criminals, those perpetrators of those crimes. So in a way, it's almost like the police have to use that tactic. And we say fair enough, but do it properly. Do it fairly.

Do it in a manner that doesn't also criminalize those kids that you find on route who've got some weed, you know. all of those elements, make sure your, you know, your body cam is on, you know, use desecalation tactics when you're doing it, you know. So I think that we want it, but we want it done fairly. It sounds like a lot of the things you're talking about are a way of just adjusting elements of the current system to improve it, to make it better. And I think maybe that's where some of the sort of unfair pushback has come,

is where people have just wanted you to tear the system down and build a great new utopia in this place. It certainly seemed that way to me. But I want to move on a little bit, Tony, and talk about the media's role in all of this, because, you know, what did you make of the way that this report was covered by journalists, whose job it is to give an objective reading of what you've presented?

Yeah, I mean, I think what happened here, again, it comes back to the prejudice around the report. It was clear that there's some section of the media and wanted to take it down before it was even written because they didn't really like the fact that who was composed in there, myself, whatever. Why not? Why don't they like it? Because maybe they thought that I was just

some patsy for the Conservative Party. Right. Yeah. And they're wrong. You know, they didn't, they didn't think it through. So what happened was they went, they put resources towards trying to sort of bring it down. And they never really addressed,

See, what interesting. They never addressed any of the recommendations. There's one in there for an office for health disparity, which we've never had in this country before, which really is going to, it's going to, you know, significantly help black and ethnic minorities live longer and be healthier, you know, because you've got a targeted now agency that's going to do that.

And, you know, I think they conceded that that wasn't bad. So it's hard to describe the media Because to be honest There were other sections of the media That really came out and said they were for this And it was much needed Yeah And of course others that didn't

I was disappointed by the BBC Their coverage of this I'll name them because I think they need to be They didn't come back and look at those recommendations I mean one of the things that The media missed which if I was a journalist, I just don't know why they didn't go after it,

which was this whole issue of the Class B drugs. I mean, that is a massive story. Yeah. Because you're teetering on. So why did they miss a government recommendation about the fact that young people could be in a position now where the police are going to not put them in a criminal justice system,

but divert them? Or, you know, why would you miss that? to go on some kind of, I don't know, journey about language that we use around race. You see, they're so obsessed with identity politics, they even miss the juicy story in the report. You know, this is the kind of thing that is strange. There were so many stories inside those recommendations. Do you think that's part of the problem that we now view everything through the lens of identity politics,

that we can't really be objective anymore? No, or even see something that looks like a great story for you. It just blocks everything. And so what it was, there were the bad guys over there that basically they don't believe in racism, whatever. They're the deniers. And I hate to say this in a sense, but a significant amount of white journalists from a particular point of view were going to police that. and tell the rest of the community what they should hear. And I think that's really what was going on.

And then the community just hears these things. It gets on the Twitter RT and that's it. You know, this is the these are the groups of people that denied the reality of racism. When in fact they actually, the first recommendation was to strengthen the body that police is racism. I mean, you couldn't, as they said, you couldn't make it up. You know, and that and so, so to me, yeah, we're in a crazy place at the moment. And do you think that this report and the legislation that's going to be put in place is going to help to calm things down?

Or do you think that we've gone, I mean, not through the looking glass, but almost halfway through? Here's the irony of the whole thing, which makes me kind of feel confident and happy. funny enough because of this the controversy around it and the whole thing the government are going to be really you know pressured now to look seriously at these recommendations so I actually think in a strange sort of way I'm hoping I'm fingers crossed to get full house on this

so in a way you know for me it's great and I believe that we may have to have a part three here where I come back because they're they're coming back I've never said record time, July. That's record time for any commission. Most of these people who do this commission, they have to wait three years to get air anything if they do. We're in July to hear it.

So, and I, my expectations are high that we will get. So, what's the result? The racism is, particularly online. Marcus Rashford's going to be really happy, you know. Well, they lost. He's not saying that. He's one on the kind of online racism. I mean, you know, I mean, the less black kids are going to get in the criminal justice system.

You're going to have a situation where more black single mother is going to get more cash in their hands or whatever they're going to get. You're going to have an office for health disparity. It's going to look at the real health conditions around black and ethnic minority people and white working class people generally. I mean, you know, you have a whole kind of range of, you know, significant practical solutions, which is this is the thing you see. Nobody wants to go down. Oh, we could actually put some answers to some of these things. Or at least, no, we don't want to.

We want to come back to identities and stuff like that and, you know, training for this and whatever, you know. Well, there's people making a few quitter of it, aren't it? Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the problem. You know, we've got an industry here. And so, and I think that those people, ordinary, and I always want to appeal to just ordinary people, yeah, who can see the common sense in this

and can see that they will benefit or not. That's how you judge it, you know. And we're going to force this government to do that. We're not a passive with this government. They're going to have a hard time putting this across the line. Believe me, you know, a conservative government diverting, you know, drugs possession is unheard of. Yeah.

Well, I know your hands are probably somewhat tied, or maybe you don't, like, the war on drugs is something that I think is not a good idea personally. And we've talked about this with others a lot. And you can totally see how not criminalizing people for possession of drugs that they're not even trying to. Class-bee drugs, because class-bee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How that would help.

And you mentioned America, we, do you think a lot of the way that we, do you think a lot of the way that we seem to have started to have these conversations in a way that I don't think we used to have in this country. Do you think a lot of that is just taking the American discourse and just importing it here? Yes, absolutely. I think that particularly in my sector, the university sector, they're going to be so careful.

We've got to be so careful because our universities are great places, and I really enjoyed being in them amongst them. But we've got to be so careful that we don't. I think what's gone wrong is that they think they're pleased. I think it's something to do is also with that nine grand as well. I mean, that is a big issue, that the students, the power that the students have with that money. They pay, therefore they're the customer. That's really what's going on here.

Believe me, if the students weren't paying, we're having this conversation. I really think that's the driver here. And I think they think that the students want, so there's a sort of sense that they don't want to, almost kind of, you know, injure the students, you know, in terms of their sense of identity and what they were. So they're trying to please everybody. And it ends up pleading anybody, really. And I think lecturers also got to be careful in this as well.

So, and that comes from the American campus coming here, you know, as well. So I do think that we should be more robust in that. And I'm not somebody who, and again, I get caricatured as someone who is, who doesn't, I mean, who doesn't think that there's a, there should be a balance here. I do think, I do think that universities should, you know, there are, there are times when, you know, there could be people who are not welcome, but very rarely, I would say it's very rare, you know. So, yes, I think you're right. It's coming a bit from the US.

I do think that we should be careful about that. And I do think that that's something that I'm hoping. that the UK now, and this report really in a sense, is looking at the UK lens. And as I've spoken about the nuances, all of you, both of you have recognised things that are inside the UK, nuances that we know about inside, you know, and it's not, it's not the same as America. Some of it's similar, but it's not the same, you know, the way in which class operates here, you know, and the way in which we, you know, our schooling system and everything else, either.

there are similarities, but the differences as well. Tony, you talk about history a little bit when you were talking about, quote, unquote, your community, Afro-Caribbeans coming here, et cetera. History has been a big topic over the last year in this country, in relation to race in particular. What are your thoughts on some of the conversations that are being had about that, the importance of teaching history through a particular angle or focusing on certain things or avoiding certain things or whatever?

Like, what have you made of that debate? Well, one of the things that is interesting with, and I can see a particular way in which history, I mean, in a strange sort of way, I got a really, it wasn't a bad about a crap school, but I mean, the history stuff was quite good.

And what happened was that we had an old Marxist taught us history, which was great, really. More and more, I'm beginning to, you would have believed that. Maybe I'm just a closet Marxist. Because, you know,

what he did was, Christopher Hill, all these other people, those kind of historians. They looked at the Industrial Revolution and saw that there were parallels. I mean, it's not light for light, because no way was it the same. But we were

taught about the fact that working class people in this country from women working in the 19th century in those horrible kind of making matches in a bright May factories, to kids going up chimneys,

the factories in Manchester and all of those kinds of industrial revolution things were going, as well as the slavery that was in the Caribbean. And so we got a range of Britain really as an imperial force that was

fairly negative in that sense and we got that and we understood that and it was and we had a good we had great debates around it so we were well schooled on that. And what was clear was that there were, it There were drivers of class and race going on at the same time. I mean, we got that notion in terms of history.

What history has become a bit is slipped into the identity politics element now. Because what tends to happen is you're teaching people history because you want them to feel good. You know what I mean? So what happens is the history becomes like a psychological kind of thing. So it's not really history about facts and understanding how things. and dynamic. What, what, you're trying to solve a couple of problems at the same time and they're not really

the same problem. So for example, people's sense of feeling mistrust to the society and their trauma around dealing with Britain, I think that should be dealt with separately almost than what you do in a, in history. Because in it, and we've come up in the report with the making of modern Britain. So what we've tried to do is, is producing. history that looks at the complex, again, involvement of Britain in terms of the empire, but also in terms of some of the positives as well.

You know, you just work the two things together. But also, we want to look at local history as well for working class white kids. What, you know, what is the history of Lancashire? What's the history of, you know, Middlesbrough, you know, what's your local history? So you get a sense of, and then the kids in Middlesbrough learning about perhaps, what happened in the Caribbean. And the kids in Brixton learning about, you know,

the history of Lancashire, you know, it says it's a whole sort of sense of, and then, of course, the ancestral histories as well. Lots of things, we want a lexicon around Indian words that come, you know, sort of words that have come from subcontinent into the modern language, the positive influences that you have. So I think the answer to your question is that,

I think what we need to do is have a better, it's not changing the curriculum, but have a better sense of the forces that make modern Britain and they're complex and they're interesting. And they're not always negative. So it's not just let's kick out, let's burn all the books that are to do with dead white men

and then leave all the rest to look at. It's not that process at all. It's actually looking at the influence So, for example, I'll give you one example of this, which is interesting. Caribbean writers came over here in the 1950s, lots of them. And a lot of their influences were Shakespeare, was the classics, if you look at the books that they read and who they were influenced, look at their biogues, they have a positive view,

even though they were anti-colonialists. At the same time, they acknowledge the influence of Britain on them. So you can't then just indoctrinate kids to say, look, all of this was a bunch of evil and all of this is just good. It's a complex mixture of both things coming together. And I think that's, so that's how I would like us to see history. And it's also about acknowledging, okay, the British Empire did do a lot of bad. But you know what?

All empires do. The Ottomans weren't woke. Yeah. You know? No. They didn't talk about intersectional identity politics. No, I did, you know, Genghis Khan, all the rest of it. What you've got to do with this is, and I'm,

is, it's, it's really true. I heard somebody say once, a teacher says that he, he was prided himself on teaching history where there was no European contact. And I said, I was wonder, what does that mean? So what he wanted to do was teach the kids about Africa free slavery. And, and, and what, what he missed there was, I agree. I think there was, you can teach history pre-slavery and you go into another history

and what's about, I don't know, Egyptians and emper and pyramids and things like, which is interesting. I think there is, and he felt that the kids needed to understand history that was longer and that was, that was stronger, you know what I mean, and that was blacker.

You know, really, that's really what we're talking about. And in effect, that kind of dodges something. Because I used to teach in the Caribbean and here, And when I realized about Caribbean kids, they were much more confident than my kids here the same year. And when I looked at the history curriculum, what they did was they didn't dodge slavery. What they did was they actually talked about how, in Jamaica in particular,

people retained their humanity within the inhumanity. So, for example, you open up those slave ledgers and you see all that the accountant would have, have, you know, the pigs, the goats, and then somebody named Sambo. And so they're all kind of, so the slave and enslaved African was just part of like the stock that was there, the livestock. Now, the truth of the matter is that my ancestors were not animals. And what you needed then is a history that talked about how they almost retain their

humanity through dance, through the way they cooked. the way they dressed, and there's a whole social history. Religion as well. Everything coming in. And that history is important so that people could understand. And also how that influenced the present. And so what I noticed that they were doing that history in the Caribbean. And also how they resisted slavery.

That's the key thing. Because if you were just an animal, you just accept it, but you weren't. And so knowing about Sam Sharpe and all these other people. So there's a constant resistance to slavery as well. So what you have then is not dodging it, but actually, and you don't dodge also the fact that the British made loads of money and exploited people, and you don't dodge the horrors of it. But you also talk about that piece of the humanity inside that. And I think that's the key way in which you then bring that through, you know, so that you end up with a very proud people because

they've been, you've seen the legacy of it, you know. And you do end up with a history that shows you, you know, the ways in which that community was pressured. But also you end up seeing how they were involved in their own emancipation. And the thing that slavery couldn't take away from them was their imaginations and their minds. And that was the key element that they taught. So I think that back to that teacher, yes, you know, but if you were just, if you were just dodging,

he didn't have the resources or the kind of sense of how to teach that piece. So he thought, oh, what I better do, I better not hurt the kids to me slavery. Let me go back and go for some Wakanda sort of thing where, you know, we're all kind of, you know, some kind of. And little does he know that even in, I mean, although Africa has its kingdoms and its, you know, and it's great architecture.

They also had issues, you know, because they're real people. You know, it's not a wonderland, you know. Well, I mean, you talk about pre-slaver. Actually, Middle Eastern slave traders took more Africans out of Africa than the white colonizers did. History is complicated, man. It is. That's what it is, right? And that's how you got to teach it.

One of the things that people misunderstood sometimes on misunderstanding that, if you teach the humanity within the inhumanity, that somehow that's, that glorifies slavery, which it doesn't. What you're doing is you're saying, wow, what are people they actually did, you know, endure this and actually retained, retain their humanity inside this. And that's important, particularly of a Black Caribbean kids to understand that. So when they come to that period, it's not just, you know,

yes, the slave ship's there, yes, people were raped and whatever, but at the same time, what else went on? And the Caribbean got that history, that social history. So that person, Sambo, is no longer a kind of derogatory name who was an animal, but it's a real person. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very positive message to the conversation on Tony. Thank you so much for coming back.

I would really appreciate it. And I think that the nuance with which you have the conversation, actually, just on a personal level, I'm very inspired by the positive and optimistic approach you have. So much of the discussion around these issues is so negative, not focused. on finding a solution, just people just want to tear the whole thing down and not look to actually improve people's lives. So I commend you for that. And congratulations. I hope, as you say, you hold the government's feet to the fire, get them to implement the recommendations. And look, if it's not enough, there'll need to be another report and more recommendations to be made, right? Yeah. Well, thanks for having me.

No, it's a pleasure. And we always finish with the last question before some questions from our patrons, our locals patrons, is what is the one thing we're not talking about? about, but we really should be. Oh, right. Right. What you should be talking about now, I suppose, is, oh, I would say, what we should be talking about now is class. We should be talking about poverty and class.

That's what we should be talking about. Not denying race, but we should also be talking about. Never get poverty in class, because those are the real key drivers, I think. and if we can get over, if we can have that conversation more and more, I think we will find that we'll, you know, we're beginning to be, we'll find solutions to some of these things that, that take us in a different place than we are at the moment. Well said, Tony.

Thank you. Thank you for coming back and thank you guys for watching. We will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one. See you soon and take care, guys.