Britons divided by their ethnicity and age in debate over race

Most black Britons believe race is still not discussed enough and that ethnic minorities are treated worse by the media than other groups, according to a major assessment of the state of race relations in the UK.

Significant generational divides in the debate over race in Britain emerged from the study, shared with the Observer, which involved large-scale polling and focus groups with ethnic minorities.

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It found that black people felt most strongly that race is not talked about enough in Britain, with 56% warning that the issue remains under-discussed. The figure stood at 31% among white Britons. In a sign of the tensions created by the issue, however, a quarter (25%) of white Britons think race is discussed too much.

The study, overseen by the British Future thinktank, comes as the debate over attitudes to race rages following allegations of racism within the royal family made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during a television interview. In a damning disclosure, the couple said someone within the royal household had asked how dark the skin of their then unborn son would be. It has been made clear that neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh made the remark.

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Prince Harry also suggested that racism was “a large part” of why the couple left Britain for the US, claiming that parts of the UK press were bigoted. Ian Murray, the executive director of the Society of Editors, resigned after a backlash against the society’s statement claiming that there is no racism in the press.

A separate Opinium poll for the Observer found that 46% of the public think the royal family have been racist in the “past few years”. Overall, a majority (55%) think the UK should continue as a monarchy, but this was 6 points lower than when the question was asked in November 2019.

More than a quarter (29%) supported the idea of Britain becoming a republic, up 6 points. Within these figures there was a huge age divide. Those aged 18-34 were evenly split (37% each), whereas the over-65s overwhelmingly supported the monarchy (72% in favour, 17% against).

The British Future study on attitudes to race reveals the vastly different experiences of different ethnic groups with regard to major UK institutions. Most black Britons (52%) felt that national newspapers treat ethnic minorities worse than they do white people. Four in 10 people from an ethnic minority (43%) felt the same way, but only a quarter (26%) of white people did. Some 70% of black people said the police treat ethnic minorities worse.

A generational divide also emerged. Twice as many white, British 18-24 year olds (60%) backed the Black Lives Matter protests compared with 28% of those aged 65 or over. The support for the protests among young white Britons was at the same level expressed by all those from an ethnic minority and slightly higher than the level of support from ethnic minority respondents aged over 55.

Asked which divides worry people the most, both white and ethnic minority Britons said that ethnicity divisions were their second highest concern, behind divides between rich and poor. Despite the concerns, those who responded did not believe that race relations in the UK were as bad as those in the US.

Across all ethnicities there is broad consensus that social media companies need to take stronger action to remove hate speech. Almost three quarters (72%) of ethnic minority Brits and white Brits said social media platforms should take stronger action.

Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, said: “We need to have a public conversation about race that is less binary than ‘Is the UK racist or not?’ – one that reflects the varying experiences of people from different backgrounds in our multi-ethnic society.

“Britain has made progress on race, but a self-congratulatory message about being better than the past will only cause frustration if it crowds out those who feel we still have much more to do if we are to achieve race equality. The issue of race has never been more salient, but for many people it can feel like a difficult topic to discuss, especially if that conversation turns into a shouting match.

“So we will need to build more confidence in how we talk about race if we are to build common ground on how to address unfairness and inequality.”

The research was based on one nationally representative poll of 1,088 white British and 1,000 ethnic minority respondents, carried out by Number Cruncher Politics between 9-17 October, and a second nationally representative poll by Number Cruncher Politics, with an expanded sample of 2,000 ethnic minority UK adults and 1,501 white UK adults, conducted from 15 January to 14 February.