The outgoing chair of the Institute of Race Relations has decried the widespread use of “nonsense” unconscious bias training, claiming it is an obvious sidestepping of tackling racial injustice.
The civil rights stalwart Colin Prescod, who is stepping down after 43 years, likened the modish phrase to the 1970s term “racial awareness”.
In a wide-ranging interview, the sociologist and cultural activist said he was proud of the role that his institute had played in putting institutional racism on the national agenda several decades ago, but was dismayed at the rise of terms such as unconscious bias.
“We made arguments to the state even when we’re on platforms alongside them saying this was nonsense. It’s racism we want to talk about, it’s systemic behaviour we want to talk about, institutionalised racism we want to talk about, not unconscious bias or racial awareness,” Prescod said. “It’s the stuff that kills that we want to talk about, the stuff that stunts lives that we want to talk about, the stuff that deforms lives that we want to talk about.”
The outgoing chair pointed to the increasing concern of a school-to-prison pipeline in the UK, where young minority ethnic children excluded from schools are forced into pupil referral units where they are groomed by criminal gangs – a clear example of systemic racism, he claims. “To talk about unconscious biases is an obvious sidestepping of the matter. And it’s also wanting to let people off,” Prescod said.
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) announced Prescod would be replaced by Dr John Narayan, a senior lecturer in European and international studies at King’s College London. Prescod will remain part of the IRR’s council, focusing on developing the IRR’s Black History Collection archive.
Prescod joined the IRR’s council in 1976 and became chair in 1980, during a volatile era. The institute responded to far-right attacks and marches, controversial policing operations and the 1981 riots – which it defined as “uprisings” – led by black and Asian youth in 10 cities across England.
Prescod intervened in many institutions, including writing letters to the Guardian. In a letter to the editor published in 1981, just weeks after the Brixton riots, Prescod wrote: “We have again witnessed the spectacles of politicians and others posturing as to the ‘causes’ of the ‘race problem’ and black people’s grievances. What is at immediate issue is not the question of general urban deprivation, let alone of immigrant numbers, or even a sudden breakdown in police-black relations, but the exceptional policing practices used against the black community in Brixton over the past two decades.” He wrote many others.
The institute “insistently” talked about institutional racism then, but was in the minority and faced significant opposition, Prescod said. “In the end, it stuck because we then had the Macpherson report amongst others using a term which was not invented by them, but by communities of resistance.”
He added: “Ambalavaner Sivanandan [former director of IRR] and we at the institute were taking our cue from what the communities of resistance were saying. Institutionalised racism was not invented in the academy. It’s not invented by the politicians, it comes off the ground.
“It comes out of slow realisation where you start with one case that shows you injustice and after a while you pull that out and you realise that you’re looking at a whole string of things that tell you there’s something more than simply a wrongdoer in this situation.”
Prescod was not surprised at the government’s recent decision to drop crucial reform commitments made after the Windrush scandal. “This is not unlike what happened after the Macpherson report, which says very clearly institutionalised racism exists. And this is not just in the police. Any number of institutions have been looked at in this kind of way. And everybody says yes, but then you look at what happened thereafter, how much was done in terms of recommendations,” he said.
When asked what he felt was the most significant change in Britain in terms of race, Prescod turned to a lyric from the British jazz band Sons of Kemet: “Don’t wanna take my country back, mate. I wanna take my country forward.” He said he finds it powerful black youth have claimed the country as their own.
“We now have populations here who are not thinking of themselves from some other place or going to some other place, but here, and are aware of their history of struggle. When Sons of Kemet says something like ‘we want to take our country forward’, notice all the words in the phrase.” He believes it shows a significant cultural shift of “new generations [of black Britons] born here, belonging here, speaking with a different kind of authority”.
Prescod said while there was no room for “triumphalism” when looking at racial progress, he was leaving his position with some hope. “There is always resistance. It’s only too clear. If you look at any situation in which somebody starts to be down-pressed, you will realise that there is somebody who is saying: get off my back, get off my throat. We don’t simply curl up.”
