Originally published here.
PLANS BY an NHS organisation to drop use of the terms BAME and BME when referring to people of African and Caribbean heritage have been welcomed by race equality campaigners who spoke to The Voice.
In July, the NHS Race and Health Observatory launched a four-week public consultation on how to appropriately refer to people from black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
During September and October, the Observatory also convened five focus groups with approximately 100 people taking part. Their feedback formed part of the survey.
After receiving responses from over 5,000 people the Observatory concluded that generic acronyms and words such as “BAME,” “BME,” and “ethnic minority” are “neither representative or generally popular.”
It said that terms such as these did “not just erase identities, it can also lead to broad brush policy decisions that fail to appreciate the nuance of ethnic inequality in the UK”.
Following feedback to its consultation, the Observatory, an independent organisation set up and backed by the NHS to address health inequities, has formally committed to stop using the terms BAME and BME.
Specific
The Observatory said that “where possible, the Observatory will always be specific about the ethnic groups it is referring to – only using collective terminology where appropriate and necessary.”
It added: “Where collective terminology is needed, the Observatory will always be guided by context, and not adopt a blanket term. Where there is a need to refer to more than one ethnic group at a time, the Observatory will use terms such as ‘Black and minority ethnic’, ‘ethnic minority’, ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’, interchangeably, to reflect the varying views of its stakeholders.”
Race equality campaigners who spoke to The Voice welcomed the decision.
Professor Patrick Vernon, who is a non-executive director at Birmingham and Solihull ICS (Integrated Care System), a collaboration of public NHS and council social care commissioners said: “In the context of health care, and tackling health inequalities BAME is unhelpful and it’s been unhelpful for many decades because it masks inequalities within communities. When you use the word BAME or issue statements such as ‘we must improve the health of BAME communities it is misleading, because you have to look at the needs of different communities.
“If you look at sickle cell or mental health for example, there is a clear disproportionality of black people, people of African and Caribbean descent who are affected by these conditions so the word BAME is not helpful.
‘Hides racism’
“And in many ways, it hides the real racism and impact of racial health inequalities on communities. Often the NHS, quite conveniently uses BAME as a way of not dealing with the real issues affecting black people. So I’d definitely welcome the decision of the Observatory to not use the term.”
The Observatory’s consultation found no single, collective umbrella term to describe ethnic groups was agreed by the majority of respondents.
Vernon said this highlighted the complexity of finding the right word to accurately describe black and Asian communities in the UK.
“The challenge is that there are times when you have to think of words that describe how racism, discrimination collectively impacts on a group of people. In the past, I’ve used terms such as racialised communities or marginalised communities. The problem is that there is actually no right word or expression to collectively describe the experiences of black and brown people.
“I think organisations have to work out, through a process of dialogue and consultation with the community, which terms would work. But it’s down to us, our communities where services are provided. We are the ones who have to say to the government ‘this is how we want to be identified’.”
‘Bunched together’
Trade union activist and race equality campaigner Zita Holbourne also backed the decision to drop the terms BAME and BME. She told The Voice: “I think the Observatory’s move is to be welcomed. Black communities and workers have been saying for a long time ‘we don’t we don’t like that term’, we don’t accept just being bunched together. It was a government that came up with that term.
“It’s just the way that the BAME acronym has just sort of been bandied around with no respect or consideration for the fact that we’re not just one group, we’re a range of different people.
“But there are times when people from African, Caribbean and Asian communities have faced discrimination and it’s appropriate to talk about all the groups together, and the disproportionate impact that it has on them.
“In the trade union movement we use black in the broadest political sense. We have the TUC black workers’ conference, we have various black members structures. But there are people who don’t want to identify with the term black so there are issues around that.”
Holbourne continued: “Others use the term ethnic minority as an alternative collective term. I don’t think it’s brilliant, because of this term minority. It’s always going to be ‘othering’ us. Technically, it’s true. In the UK we are a minority but we are a global majority.
Broad conversations
“Is there ever going to be a good term that people are comfortable with? Probably not. I think it’s complex. And it’s not straightforward and you’re never going to satisfy everybody. But I think that you don’t have to reduce things to acronyms. If you need to refer to a particular ethnic grouping, spell it out, use the words, don’t just turn them into an acronym. When you do that it just becomes a label them that you can just put in a box.”
Speaking about the NHS Race and Health Observatory’s survey and the decision to drop the BAME and BME acronyms Dr Habib Naqvi, director of the Observatory said: “The communities we engage and work with needed to be at the centre of these broad conversations before the Observatory took a final decision on its own approach towards terminology use. This is not the end of the conversation as we remain open to revisit preferences over time.”
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