The Government must not get distracted by semantics surrounding the term BAME and instead should be looking to make "measurable" changes to address systematic inequalities in the 海角视频, according to the head of the Black South West Network (BSWN).
Sado Jirde said she welcomed the proposal by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities - set up last year by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death in the US - as “long overdue”.
But she said she remained hopeful for “far more substantive recommendations" to tackle systemic inequalities.
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The race disparities commission is set to publish its recommendations this week, reportedly including advice to companies and public bodies to no longer use the term BAME, which stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.
The widely-used label has drawn criticism, including from Labour's shadow justice secretary David Lammy, who has been a major critic of the term.
The Government says it does not routinely use the terms BAME or BME (Black and minority ethnic) because “they include some groups and not others” and are “not well understood” in user research.
Ms Jirde said the BSWN, which is based in Bristol, and “many others across the 海角视频” had argued against the use of the term for many years.
She explained: “‘Black’ is political, ‘Asian’ is geographical (and is often is not used to describe people from all of Asia such as those from Russia), ‘minority’ is context specific and not always accurate, and ‘ethnic’ is a word that has become synonymous with Black and Brown people as though white people are not also an ethnic group.
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“Whilst it is used as a way of describing all those who are not white, the implications of such a generalising term leads to a lack of specificity losing the experiences of particular groups within that.”
According to the BSWN, Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth while people in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic groups are 50% more likely to live in the most deprived areas in England.
"This has implications for policy as these variations are omitted in umbrella terms such as BAME and make it harder to design targeted policy interventions," added Ms Jirde.
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The BSWN said it hoped the report would also include recommendations to address the disparities in outcomes recently highlighted by the unequal impact of the coronavirus on different communities.
Last year, the BSWN reported the virus and social-distancing rules had exacerbated pre-existing socio-economic inequality in the region.
Ms Jirde added: “While the acknowledgement of the problematic nature of the term BAME is appreciated and certainly important, in the context of Black Lives Matter and the disproportionate impacts of Covid-19, Brexit and years of austerity on racialised communities, we must not get distracted with semantics but rather seek actionable and measurable change, both qualitatively and quantitatively.”