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| Mural by David Speed and Graffiti Life Collective (Credit: The New Indian Express) |
You might be shaking your head as a result of my brash
naivety. A naivety that has let my eyes wander too far down an article
published by the Telegraph and allowing myself to become enraged by its
contents. I will concede that anyone who is viciously contracting their neck muscles
as they read the title of this article will be right, I shouldn’t have set upon
David Green’s 'Campaigners Twisting Covid-19 BAME Statistics' as I would only
come up with the phrase Torygraph burned into my frontal lobe even more
so than before. However, Green’s own twisting of the situation is
exactly what I believe causes the very divisions that he seems so vehemently
opposed to in the article. The reasons for which, I will go into throughout
this piece whilst deconstructing the destructive narrative put forward in
Green’s slap dash “conclusion first, evidence later” reasoning.
Victimhood, discrimination and division. It’s almost as if
the righteous deliverers of truth at the Telegraph are more obsessed with
victims - and labelling them as such – than the victims are with themselves.
Green’s essential thrust is that there’s an undeniable slant on the
presentation of statistics relating to BAME deaths as a result of Coronavirus
and that slant is to convince the public that perpetrators of systematic
structural racism are working at their very hardest to discriminate against
minorities.
I do not at all want to open up the institutional racism can
of worms on this occasion as focusing too much on this universe plays right
into Green’s hands when the issue is far more conducive to health inequalities
across socio-economic demographics as the key nuance. My essential point is
that Green draws up the classic straw man fallacy to summon the archetypal nation-hating
moaning Minnie into existence and then destroy them with the “facts.” It seems
to be quite apparent that there is barely anyone – especially from the likes of
the BBC and Channel 4 as he quotes – that is using the statistics to hammer so
hard and agenda such as the one mentioned, if any at all.
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| Taken from the Institute of Fiscal Studies' full report, accessible HERE |
The usage of statistics more generally is an important tool
utilised by individuals, journalists, governments and organisations to gain a
more comprehensive and birds eye view of an issue using numbers they would not
be in ordinary knowledge of without research. Before even trying to use
statistics to fight a certain corner, the identification and presentation of
figures can aid in magnifying an issue that wasn’t previously in the limelight.
I use the analogy of the care home statistics as a fresh-faced comparison. The
exclusion of care home deaths due to Covid-19 form total hospital deaths in
previous weeks did not assist in reflecting the nature of a specific problem in
the health and social care sector. In a quest to obtain statistics, a growing
awareness and solidarity is exhibited by many who have now had the hardships of
a certain group put in front of them. From this point of awareness, we move
closer to solutions through pressure on relevant groups to produce helpful
statistics.
I would hope my analogy holds and I use it only to
illustrate how bringing an issue to the forefront using stats can provide more
knowledge, awareness and sometimes an indicator as to the causes of a
problem. The purpose of major media outlets covering this story is not to argue
a case peddled by champions of victimhood but is much simpler. As Occam’s Razor
tells, the simplest solution is usually the right one and the highlighting of
these statistics is primarily to raise the fact that a virus affecting everyone
is affecting citizens within minority communities disproportionately to the
total population size of those minority ethnic groups. The publishing of such
statistics is to expose a head scratching set of data to the masses; suggest possible explanations; use reliable
evidence to hypothesise a healing strategy and finally, aid us in reinforcing
the idea that multiculturalism is a pillar in our society that can’t be ignored.
Green, of course can’t argue with the numbers and his
critique of them has to go straight to a false narrative in the concoction of
stats. Green goes straight for the real reasons to explain the IFS report
much like how a TV salesman sharply pulls out the potent remedy to a problem - the
solution’s acute convenience being the cheapening factor to its silvery shimmer.
We are given a slap dash questionable genetic explanation for why ethnic
minorities might be experiencing higher deaths in self-flattering response to
our soap box discrimination wielding man made out of straw. This example will
not be the focus of this article in very much the same way it wasn’t in Green’s
article due to its lack of evidential substantiation and how niche these
genetic dispositions are.
The example of Sickle cell disease briefly touched on is a
cherry-picked genetic disease that affects commonly more people from African
and Caribbean groups but not exclusive to that background. The disease affects
approximately 13,500 and a question is left open as to the affect Sickle cell
and possibly other genetic ethnicity related diseases may have on sufferers of
Covid-19. I would question how the relatively low number of Sickle cell disease
sufferers in the UK correlates to Covid-19 deaths as a whole and BAME deaths
specifically. Green’s bringing up of a genetic justification only begs more
questions, answerable using overwhelmingly – you guessed it - more statistics. This
serves to reinforce how statistics are key to investigating affairs where layman
knowledge is limited.
The real meat and gravy is in the “cultural”, “health
conditions” and “occupational” reasons given that are manifested in the high
diabetes count in BAME men; the fact South Asians live in households with more
family members across wider age ranges and the fact both groups take up a
disproportionate percentage of the health sector in relation to their total
percentage within the greater population. All of these reasons for why the
deaths are occurring definitely hold weight to some degree but it’s the reason
for Green raising them in his article that has me flummoxed and quite indignant
at his thesis. The reasoning is that these are all examples of how
discrimination isn’t the factor for the disparity of deaths in response
to a case that’s not being made.
The case that I would make is that these statistics do shed
light on all the examples raised by Green and we should be focusing on why this
is the case and how to manifest greater communication of policy to help people
in different situations to our own. How are we able to prevent a spread in the
virus within big concentrated Asian families which may also be exacerbated by
those same families making up a socio-economic group that are either key
workers or are unable to work from home. How can we tackle the lifestyle
choices perhaps leading to diabetes and how can we educate about prevention?
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| Credit: The New Indian Express |
I would make the final point before concluding that I refuse
to accept a patronising pat on the back of ethnic minority people who have
socially mobilised by becoming doctors or nurses and would go as far to say
this appraisal is merely a guise to quiet consequential outcry as a result of
these statistics. Speaking of a presentation of figures free from manipulation,
maybe we should question why the correct equipment hasn’t been provided to NHS
workers to keep themselves safe doing their heroic duty? Instead, Green is so fixated
on the goal of shooting dead any indication of top-down discrimination that he
is prepared to clap BAME group’s ability to marginally succeed in an occupation
at the expense of deaths due to a lack of PPE. In short, important health
inequality issues inferred by the IFS report should not be glossed over in
exchange for a transparent commending of BAME people when they continue to die
at the hands of lazy government conduct. Especially not as a response to a
narrative forced into the mouths of community members that they are “playing
the victim” once again.
Pushing the victimhood narrative is damning for
the fabric of our society during this pandemic and I would protest that in trying
to make everyone clap together as a nation through his own twisting of these
statistics, Green is pushing contrasting groups away from each other more than
ever. There are very many problems within communities that we may not be aware
of or do not understand and through the illumination of statistics we can
become better acquainted with all the factors at play so that one may
come to know the other (in a very Levinas way). You never know, you may
learn something about someone who shares an experience similar to yourself.
Through understanding our differences, we may clap in spirited kinship with all
kinds of British citizens in mind. Myself and many others were not at all aware
of how diverging the NHS worker death toll was in contrast to care workers. Some may not have even known there was such an acute difference in these sectors
that upon its reveal, showed how the administering of PPE was so detrimentally contrasting.
This is why we must not paint a picture of members of our nation that is
ascribing them as proud victims. Using this victimhood to stir pots of peoples
on either side of a potentially dividing line only exacerbates a rattled public
in already tumultuous times.
Sources
- ‘Campaigners are twisting Covid data to
further their ‘victimhood’ agenda’', David Green -https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/04/campaigners-twisting-bame-covid-data-victimhood-agenda/
- ‘Are some ethnic groups more vulnerable to Covid-19
than others?’, Lucinda Platt and Ross Warwick - https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/chapter/are-some-ethnic-groups-more-vulnerable-to-covid-19-than-others/
- Sickle Cell Community Report by Suffolk Health
and Wellbeing - https://www.healthysuffolk.org.uk/uploads/Sickle_Cell.pdf
-‘Why are people from BAME groups dying disproportionately
of Covid-19?’, Nishi Chaturvedi - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/why-are-people-from-bame-groups-dying-disproportionately-of-covid-19
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