Dot Wordsworth

The problem with ‘bame’

[iStock] 
issue 25 September 2021

In its coverage of the shuffled cabinet, the BBC added a note: ‘BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) is a term widely used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent, as defined by the Institute of Race Relations.’

The Institute of Race Relations was founded in 1958, but in 1972, by its own account, it became ‘an anti-racist thinktank’ and began to focus on ‘direct analyses of institutionalised racism in Britain’.

Earlier this year, its director Liz Fekete complained about the government indicating...

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