Patrick West

The BBC is right to ditch the ‘Bame’ label

Lenny Henry (Credit: Getty images)

Broadcasters in the UK have declared they will no longer use the acronym BAME to refer to black, Asian and minority ethnic people. Following a report by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 have committed themselves to avoiding this catch-all term ‘wherever possible’, in favour of more specific terms to describe ethnicity. This is good news. 

Last year a task force set up by UK Music, which represents the commercial interests of the sector, called the term ‘outdated and offensive’; this latest report concluded that it could cause ‘serious insult’. Quite so. The categorical term ‘BAME’ might as well have been called ‘Miscellaneous’, in crudely lumping together all non-white people.

The report said that ‘BAME’ had been ‘used to hide failures’ in the ‘representation of certain ethnic minorities’. There is indeed great variation in experiences between ethnic minorities, not least in wealth and education. According to a Parliamentary study, those from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds are twice as likely to be in the bottom fifth of incomes than average, having the lowest median household incomes. They are closely followed by people from a black ethnic group, while people from white and Indian groups had the highest median incomes.

Pigeon-holing people by ethnicity, sexuality or race can be a perilous and counter-productive affair

In education, the worst performers are Black Caribbean and White British, followed by those of Pakistani ethnicity. The best performers in secondary schools are Indians and Chinese who, according to the government, outperform White British by ‘wide margins’.

Such statistics not only render the term ‘BAME’ useless and misleading, but they make a nonsense of the popular narratives of ‘white privilege’ and the oppression of ethnic minorities. 

Clearly, minorities in Britain have different cultures and different experiences.

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