When thinking about Black Lives Matter, consider “facts as well as feelings”, says David Goodhart on Unherd.com. He does so in what seems to be a reasoned and balanced way; acknowledging that issues exist whilst arguing that things are really not so bad as activists say, that BLM is actually making matters worse.

https://unherd.com/2020/06/facts-vs-feelings-in-the-blm-debate/

Except his ‘facts’ are not just flawed, they’re unsupported by the very documents and links he cites.

It is seductive and reassuring to see an article like this studded with underlying hyperlinks. Mostly we don’t have time to click on them; we just assume the assertions being made are supported by the ‘evidence’ being linked.

But as Goodhart made a headline of the importance of facts vs feelings, I decided to check each of his links. What I discovered was that he was serving up distortions and lies about the data he references.

Goodhart begins with:

“The UK doesn’t yet have a US-style black middle class, but we are getting there. More than 35% of British-Caribbean men are now in the top two social classes (out of seven) up from just 11% in the 1990s, British-African men lag behind at 28%. On average poverty is higher and accumulated wealth a lot lower for black people, but pay is now only a bit below average.”

For his statement “More than 35% of British-Caribbean men are now in the top two social classes (out of seven)” he links to UK dataset survey index page (https://tinyurl.com/y8zql3c8) rather than any actual data. If you can access the data (not easy) you'll see nothing to suggest any such categorisation. Nor, when you google UK Data set and UK government data and social classes, will you find reference to ‘seven’ social classes. You do find the idea of seven social classes put forward in a 2015 BBC survey: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058 but what is noticeable when you read the full paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038038513481128) is that there is no categorisation by ethnicity.

Goodhart’s audacious ‘in plain sight’ distortions go on. Take the figure he uses in comparison to the 35% - the “11% in the 1990s’. He links to a paper written by Yaojun Li in 2010 which only categorises five ‘classes’ (salariat, intermediate, working class, unemployed and inactive) not seven. So Goodhart is not comparing like for like… at all.

The Li paper is downloadable from here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227103747_Struggling_onto_the_Ladder_Climbing_the_Rungs_Employment_and_Class_Position_of_Minority_Ethnic_Groups_in_Britain

Looking at it, you won’t find Goodhart’s 11% in the 90s’. Because the data is divided not by decades but into the periods of 1972-80, 1981-96, 97-05.

What the data does show is interesting. In 1972-80, 21% of white British men were the salariat class, 51% in intermediate and 16.8% in the working class. For Black Caribbean men it was 7.6%/49.3%/29.2%. By 97- 05 it was 31%/35%/11.6% for white men and 20%/33%/12% for Black Caribbean men.

So this could be seen as a movement of BC men into the salariat from the intermediate class. But look at the picture for working class men. In 72-80, 14% combined total of BC men were economically inactive or unemployed. A figure that had risen to 34% in 97-05. More than double. So whatever social mobility gains had been made in one direction had been more than offset by an alarming drop in the other.

Li’s conclusion in the above paper is worth reading, but more current is his analysis from 2017 (http://classonline.org.uk/docs/Race_and_Class_Post-Brexit_Perspectives_report_v5.pdf ) in which he concludes:

“There is also evidence of racial discrimination affecting first and second generations alike. In spite of their better education, both generations of ethnic minorities failed to attain occupational positions commensurate with their human capital, which was especially noteworthy in the case of the second generation who are educated in Britain.

Further analysis shows that this disadvantage was acute for men in both black groups, the second generation in particular.

Ethnic minorities have thus experienced marked barriers to achievement. While the barriers for the first generation may be partly accounted for by personal factors such as lack of language skills, structural reasons would be a better explanation for what affects the second generation.”

The data shows that challenges are actually amplified for second generation black men – the opposite of Goodhart’s argument. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that it is all getting better.

Let’s move on – to perhaps the most misleading claim Goodhart makes in his article:

“On average poverty is higher and accumulated wealth a lot lower for black people, but pay is now only a bit below average.”

So whilst he acknowledges the unarguable about poverty and wealth, he counterweights it by some positive news about pay and links to this Government research: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/average-hourly-pay/latest

If you bother to look at the research itself though, you will discover that it demonstrates the exact opposite. In 2013 average pay for ‘white British’ was £10.60. By 2018 it was £11.90. There has been a steady year on year rise. Back in 2013 average pay for black Britons was £10.27 - just 33p less than the white British population. It then dipped to £9.91 in 2015. By 2018 it was up to £10.80. But that is £1.10 behind white Britons. Clearly, the pay gap has got worse - not better - both in proportional as well as real terms. What does Goodhart mean by “only a bit below average”?  

Yes, the situation is different for other ethnic minorities. Yes, ethnic Indians earn more than whites on average in 2018, as they did in 2013. But Pakistani and Bangladeshi earnings are worse, and worse even than Black Britons.

So in Goodhart’s evidence, he distorts and even lies about the facts in order to support a rosy picture of an emerging black middle class.

His next paragraph: “Black children now slightly outperform whites in the Government’s Progress 8 school measures. Young black people are more likely to go to university than whites, 41% to 31%, albeit only 9% go to elite Russell Group universities compared to 12% of whites. Black people are well represented at the top in sport, music, the arts, and the public sector, while under-represented in business and academia.”

If anything, the fact that black children ‘outperform’ white children in education - but not once they are in the workplace - is a telling illustration of the problem.

Let’s examine the facts Goodhart is so keen for us to consider. First of all, the figures are all higher education. Figures not just for universities, as he states; a subtle distortion that creates an impression of educational attainment not reflected in reality.

Let’s put that to one side. It's true more ethnic minorities go to higher education than whites but to me, this reflects aspiration, effort and potential - the determination of young black people to progress. It’s what happens next, in the workplace, that is instructive – because it is the gap between aspiration and realisation that is a big part of the issue.

Goodhart’s next sentence about black people excelling in music and sport is a classic example of a patronising attitude that confronts black people. The attitude that says – ‘oh but they are good at sport (which is itself a very fraught area as to why) and pop music and stuff like that’ – all the stuff that you don’t need a degree for... because you don’t need to be smart to rap or run. But the 41% who go into higher education want IS fair access to the areas Goodhart acknowledges there is underrepresentation - including business and academia.

Looking at the actual Government dataset he cites for the Russell group comparison, what do we find? Firstly, the data does not have a general BAME category – it subdivided by ethnicity (eg Pakistani, Chinese, Black Caribbean, Black African etc) so I have no idea where Goodhart gets the catch-all “young black people” from: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/destinations-of-ks4-and-ks5-pupils-2017

If you look carefully at the ‘additional and underlying data’ spreadsheet: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/772883/Additional_and_underlying_data.zip you’ll see that for state funded mainstream schools and colleges, 12% of white leavers went to Russell Group universities and 16% to top third universities. The percentages for Black Caribbean is 6% to Russell Group and 10% for top third. 12% to 6% is a much larger gap than the 12% to 9% Goodhart claims. It’s a subtle masking of the true facts.  

So, all of Goodhart’s so called facts empower him to conclude in his next paragraph “So far, so relatively good.” No Mr Goodhart. It is not. Not even relatively.

Almost every other subsequent ‘fact’ in his article seems to be mendacious or distorted – or simply not there.

Goodhart talks about an apparent decline in racial prejudice. Look at the paper he links to: http://natcen.ac.uk/media/1488132/racial-prejudice-report_v4.pdf Yes, there has been a small decline in people who say they are prejudiced since 1983 , but as the paper concludes:

“This year, 26% of respondents described themselves as ‘very’ or ‘a little’ racially prejudiced. So for nearly 35 years, while the percentage of the population describing themselves as racially prejudiced has varied, it remains the case that it has never fallen below 25%, and we are still not seeing a clear liberalising trend.”

In relation to 1% he mentions – he directs us to a paper HE wrote for the right wing think tank Policy Exchange that argues the media coverage of the Natcen data was too negative: https://policyexchange.org.uk/accentuating-the-negative-on-race/ . So he is recycling his previous argument that, at least,  it is only 1% of the country who are self-declared racists… It’s a classic piece of political prestidigitation.

Goodhart writes how, yes, 12% of the prison population are black but 20% of robberies are by black people. Is he implying that perhaps more black men should be in prison and we should be grateful the number is so low? Even then, why are 20% of robbery convictions as such? How much of it is to do with the recognised institutional racism in the police force, how much is to do with the socio-economic factors underlying crime that should be addressed?

In the same paragraph about ‘disproportionality’ he links to a paper about ‘stop and search’ published in 2000 (so hardly current) that actually unpacks WHY Stop and search is disproportionately carried out.

In actual fact, recent government data suggests that black men are nearly ten times as likely to be stopped and searched by police compared to white people: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest

That is 38 black people per 1000 are stop and searched vs 4 of 1000 of whites.

Goodhart is making a false equivalency in connecting the prison population with stop and search. The central issues around stop and search that concern black activists are whether they are motivated by discrimination. Have a look at this from the EHRC: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/ehrc_stop_and_search_report.pdf

Quote from the Executive Summary:

“Various explanations have been put forward as to why the police use stop and search powers so disproportionately against certain groups. Even taken together, however, they provide no justification for the extent and persistence of the problem. One common explanation, that black people are generally more often involved in crime is not supported by robust evidence. In any case, stops and searches should be carried out on the basis of ‘reasonable suspicion’. It is unlawful for the police to base their suspicions on generalised beliefs about particular groups.

While stop and search plays some role in preventing and detecting crime, the impact is small. It is estimated that searches only reduced the number of disruptable crimes by 0.2 per cent. Its use therefore needs to be balanced against the negative impact on community confidence in the police if these powers are used unfairly.

Strong differences between similar and/ or neighbouring police areas indicate that the way a particular police force uses its stop and search powers may be more significant than the nature of the communities it serves.

The evidence points to racial discrimination being a significant reason why black and Asian people are more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. It implies that stop and search powers are being used in a discriminatory and unlawful way.”

The report Goodhart himself cites from 2000 examines the same thing. Here is a table from it:

Goodhart’s article is pretty pernicious because it comes across as balanced, but distorts the evidence to create a picture that allows him to round on the victims. Because the situation here in the UK is not objectively/subjectively as bad as in the US he uses this to talk of “False or exaggerated claims of victimhood”. Goodhart is building an army of straw men.

Holding up the views of controversial figures like Trevor Phillips and Munira Mirza to back him up. Goodhart goes on to say they and other black ‘elite’ - “would, I think, challenge the BLM story in three main ways. First, if you want to help disadvantaged black people focus on practical solutions to inner city problems: more investment in anti-knife crime units; more black police officers (just 1% at present); greater efforts to deal with obesity levels and chronic bad health; a national volunteering scheme for inner-city school mentors. Second, do not ignore the self-inflicted wounds of violent crime, fatherless families, anti-educational “acting white” culture. Third, reject victim culture which can discourage young blacks from aiming higher, using racism as an excuse for any setback.”

Importantly, the practical solutions to the “inner city problems” he mentions are not being dismissed by activists. But let’s be clear, these must be government policy initiatives, not ones that the black community have the power to enact. So why does he say they are part of the “BLM story”? Once you move past the policy initiatives to his second and third points, you get to what he thinks are the real issues - “self-inflicted wounds” and ‘victim culture’, he’s in effect blaming not institutional or structural racism but Black Britons themselves for the barriers they face - ‘you are the main part of the problem, not us - so sort yourselves out.’

If there was ‘victim culture’ preventing young blacks from aiming higher, as he claims, how does that tally with his great news about blacks in higher education?

His article reeks of condescension. Even the fact that he ‘thinks’ Munira Mirza and Trevor Phillips would say this. Perhaps so, but perhaps he could ask them rather than assume he can speak for them?

Assertions like “and happily the black elite is now large enough to accommodate real intellectual variety.” are revealing. He’s pleased that there are a few conservative black voices. And of course, they must be both elite and intellectual… just like him. Unlike the BLM rabble marching in our streets, who are fired up by ‘feelings’ rather than argument.

Goodhart says “that stereotypes and unconscious biases do linger on” – but his use of the word ‘linger’ suggests they are just vestigial and will disappear of their own accord. The whole article is cloaked in exactly the kind of rhetorical ‘balance’ and ‘rationality’ that is used to uphold a broken status quo.

What the struggle for civil, social and human rights has shown us is that unless people are active – things don’t change. Change has happened in the past because people have agitated. Be it Suffragettes or Stonewall or Stephen Lawrence, or this moment in time after the death of George Floyd. Of course, there are excesses and distractions found in any activists' argument. But you can’t expect inertia to be a driver for significant change, or that the problems are somehow too big to tackle on an individual basis. Addressing issues like unconscious bias and microaggressions may seem small things, but it is in these cumulative small ways, the adjustments in our day to day lives, that we can help achieve a paradigm shift. That is, if you want it.

“Everybody selects facts to suit — and make — their case” says Goodhart. In future, he should at least he try to use facts that actually do this, rather than the opposite.