A Labour-backed report has been slammed after it branded a popular UK tourist city as a place of “casual, systemic and structural racism”.
The report into the city of York by the campaign group Inclusive Equal Rights UK (IERUK) and funded by the Labour-run city council using figures from the 2021 Census, revealed just 14 percent of the cities population is of Black Asian and Minorised Ethnicity (BAME). Now the group has pledged to turn the city into the first “anti-racist” city in the North.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics have challenged the findings, showing the actual ethnic minority population of York is 7.2 percent.
The report recommended more recruitment for ethnic minority groups, with 6.3 percent of the city council’s workforce, 7.5 percent at the University of York and 9.7 percent of the staff York St John University were BAME.
However, the Office for National Statistics figures suggests the employment figures are much more in line with the general population.
Haddy Njie, chairman of IERUK denied giving misleading information, saying researchers took a “deep dive” into the most recent Census, the Daily Mail reports.
Ms Nije said: “This work matters because the data widely documents that racism in York is casual, systemic, and structural. It is manifested in many forms that disproportionately and negatively impacts the lives and livelihood of people of colour.”
The report claimed that black people are 90 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police then white people.
While people of Asian ethnicity were 18 times higher.
However, it went on to state that an overwhelming majority of 1,843 of the stop and search incidents involved white British people and just 33 of Asian, 24 Caribbean, 21 Pakistani and 13 African background.
Chris Steward, leader of the council’s Tory group hit back at the report saying it could lead to false representation of the city.
He said: “I’ve lived in York all my life and I would certainly say York does not have structural and systemic racism. I can’t understand how they can make out the population is 14 percent ethnic minority, it’s not anything like that high.
“Like anywhere York has its issues but I regard it as a very friendly and tolerant place to people of all colours.’
“It will lead to people thinking why would York want to jump on this issue, is there a real problem in York? I wouldn’t see York as having a big racism problem.”
