We have just witnessed a string of protests in the UK about racial discrimination. How does the UK compare with the USA and EU for racism?
In the following graphs the results of the Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Being Black in the EU are compared with US resources (But see Note 1).
Housing discrimination is central to the ability of ethnic minorities to move outside any ghettos that might exist. The EU and USA have very serious problems with housing discrimination against black people:
Direct experience of discrimination is almost as high in the EU as in the US, the UK is a relative paragon:
The US Source ( On the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United States ) also gives a figure for discrimination against white Americans. If this figure is true and if there are four times as many white Americans as black it suggests that black Americans are twice as likely to discriminate as white Americans or that dislike by whites of white foreigners is being conflated with racism in the data.
Minorities are in danger of suffering discrimination simply because they are minorities. Four times as many whites as blacks in the USA has the consequence that to achieve no imbalance in discrimination each member of the white community has to be four times less likely to discriminate than each member of the black community, at present they are only half as likely to discriminate.
The EU and USA are similar for racial discrimination. White people in the UK are much less likely to discriminate than those in the USA or EU.
The prevalence of Racial Hate Crime is more difficult to measure. The true rate of hate crime in the UK is measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) . The rate of reporting hate crimes to the police has increased dramatically but the underlying rate of hate crimes in the population has been fairly constant:
The BBC uses the most extreme graphs to record hate crime reporting rather than the prevalence of hate crime because it desires to make a point about Brexit, "explaining" the increase in reporting with "Because Brexit appeals to these kinds of people, it's brought them out of the shadows,":
As is seen below the 2017-18 figures seem to have been due to a succession of terrorist attacks, not, as the BBC suggests, Brexit. The 2016-17 figures could easily have been due to the biased coverage of Brexit in the Remain media as a racist phenomenon, so encouraging reporting of hate crime.
The reporting of hate crime to the police does indeed appear to be politically motivated because it accompanies major events then returns to much lower levels.
If the underlying rate of hate crime is steady and the reporting is volatile it is important to understand whether the reported hate crime figures are being generated by groups that have an agenda. Reports of racism are an excellent way to mobilise people in the UK or to divert the UK media.
International comparisons of hate crime are very difficult to make because the definition of "hate crime" varies dramatically.
Police shootings are almost impossible to compare between countries. This is shown in a graphic from The Conversation which shows shootings per million population:
The UK figures are so small they are scarcely visible on this illustration. The figure is 0.016. The US figures dwarf all the others at around a 1000 shootings per year. This is because the USA has a different culture from the UK and EU where in the US the police are expecting suspected criminals to be armed. The systemic problem is almost certainly the right to carry arms as much as racism. Even were racism to be eliminated there would always be cases of police shooting black people if the police are terrified that suspects are armed.
In the following graphs the results of the Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Being Black in the EU are compared with US resources (But see Note 1).
Housing discrimination is central to the ability of ethnic minorities to move outside any ghettos that might exist. The EU and USA have very serious problems with housing discrimination against black people:
 |
| US Source: Harvard https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/black-americans-discrimination-work-police/ |
Direct experience of discrimination is almost as high in the EU as in the US, the UK is a relative paragon:
The US Source ( On the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United States ) also gives a figure for discrimination against white Americans. If this figure is true and if there are four times as many white Americans as black it suggests that black Americans are twice as likely to discriminate as white Americans or that dislike by whites of white foreigners is being conflated with racism in the data.
Minorities are in danger of suffering discrimination simply because they are minorities. Four times as many whites as blacks in the USA has the consequence that to achieve no imbalance in discrimination each member of the white community has to be four times less likely to discriminate than each member of the black community, at present they are only half as likely to discriminate.
The EU and USA are similar for racial discrimination. White people in the UK are much less likely to discriminate than those in the USA or EU.
The prevalence of Racial Hate Crime is more difficult to measure. The true rate of hate crime in the UK is measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) . The rate of reporting hate crimes to the police has increased dramatically but the underlying rate of hate crimes in the population has been fairly constant:
 |
| Graph used by BBC |
As is seen below the 2017-18 figures seem to have been due to a succession of terrorist attacks, not, as the BBC suggests, Brexit. The 2016-17 figures could easily have been due to the biased coverage of Brexit in the Remain media as a racist phenomenon, so encouraging reporting of hate crime.
The reporting of hate crime to the police does indeed appear to be politically motivated because it accompanies major events then returns to much lower levels.
 |
| Source address: Home Office |
If the underlying rate of hate crime is steady and the reporting is volatile it is important to understand whether the reported hate crime figures are being generated by groups that have an agenda. Reports of racism are an excellent way to mobilise people in the UK or to divert the UK media.
International comparisons of hate crime are very difficult to make because the definition of "hate crime" varies dramatically.
Police shootings are almost impossible to compare between countries. This is shown in a graphic from The Conversation which shows shootings per million population:
The death rate in police custody is what all the demonstrations are about. In the UK and EU there are too few deaths for fair comparisons:
Under 20 people, black and white, die per year in UK police custody. On average 1.3 black people die in police custody per year out of approximately 900,000 arrests a year. Even in the USA the rates of death in custody are so small that it is as likely that deliberate killings by police are due to psychopathic illness in the odd policeman, compounded by loyalty among officers, as much as any systemic problem. However, the UK managed to reduce its deaths in custody figures from about 0.7 per million to 0.2 and the USA can undoubtedly do the same. Perhaps the key change is to hold the "loyalty group" of police as responsible as the killer: the police must shop their own criminals.
This leaves us with huge questions: why are so many UK protesters protesting against the USA when our neighbours in the EU are as racist? Why are protestors in the UK, perhaps the least racist country in Europe, prepared to kill hundreds of their fellow citizens with COVID19, a death toll that will be higher than all police shootings in Europe combined?
Can anyone doubt that what started in the USA as a reasonable demand for justice is now a media storm with lethal results? Are the British turning virtue signalling into an evil?
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Note 1: The EU source has 5 years as the longest window of measurement whereas the US sources measure discrimination over a lifetime so the EU figures are likely to be higher than shown if we were comparing lifetime experience. The difference in measurement window is due to large black populations being a relatively new phenomenon in the EU.
5/6/2020
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Note 1: The EU source has 5 years as the longest window of measurement whereas the US sources measure discrimination over a lifetime so the EU figures are likely to be higher than shown if we were comparing lifetime experience. The difference in measurement window is due to large black populations being a relatively new phenomenon in the EU.
5/6/2020
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