A Cancer of Betrayal: The Revisionism of the Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. A Review by The Race Equality Centre

This is a response to the recently published Sewell Report on Race and Ethnic Disparities established by the Government in the wake of heightened awareness and focus on issues of racial injustices and disparities spurred and laid bare in the wake of several concerns including:

(a) The Windrush scandal and the toxic “hostile environment” created by discriminatory governmental policies targeting the African Caribbean community in Britain.

(b) Revelations about the disproportionate impact of the corona virus on Black people and heightened awareness about racist attacks on peoples with far eastern origins; and 

(c) The militancy of the Black Lives Matters Movement which began by mass demonstrations to confront long existing concerns about the trope of racism which confronts Black people in Britain by endemic covert and overt forms of direct, indirect, institutional, systemic, institutional, and structural racism.

Despite being applauded in some quarters as a “liberal-minded but honest, evidence-based story on race”, “intelligent common sense”  and that it “rightly identifies the varied causes of disparities”, the report has been widely condemned as being “blighted by...serious failings that render it harmful to a constructive debate about racial equality”, and rather than being value free, it is based on “cherry-picked data to support a particular narrative” which is a “missed opportunity” lacking the “scientific credibility and authority” denigrating its usability for “major policy decisions”. 

Indeed, it was widely felt that the appointment of Sewell to chair this crucial commission was somewhat cynical, given the fact that he was someone who viewed evidence of the existence of institutional racism as being “somewhat flimsy” and who had expressed a prior opinion that described the Black Lives Matter demonstrations as a “lower middle-class revolt”, claiming that such protest over statues was a “side-show”. 

Similarly, Munira Murza, who, on behalf of the Government set up the Commission and appointed Sewell as its chair, had also downplayed racism as an “institutional problem” and, in the Racial Disparities Audit established, by then Prime Minister, Theresa May in 2018, had alleged that: 

“It reinforces this idea that ethnic minorities are being systematically oppressed, that there’s a sort of institutional problem, when in fact what we’ve seen in the last 20 years is a liberalisation, an opening up for many people”.

It appears that the Commission was an attempt by the government to downplay the reality of structural racism in Britain. This was pointed out by Dr Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, in recognizing both Dr Sewell and Ms. Mirza had “preconceived ideas” on the issue, with both of them, from the outset, “denying the existence of institutional racism”. That being so, why would they address this issue in an “objective manner?”, rather than follow “whatever the Government mantra is?”. She asserted that the Government does not carry the “confidence of black and ethnic minority communities” any longer, “certainly not on race”. As an ominous precursor to this perverse report, Boris Johnson’s race adviser, Samuel Kasamu, resigned ahead of its publication, having “criticised” the government for pursuing a “politics steeped in division”. Further, we believe that Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, was right to say this “damaging report” has “moved the race debate backwards” and that this is something Johnson and his colleagues have “actively cultivated for their own political ends”.

The report reduces the concept of racism to individual bias and the perceptions of many in so called ethnic communities, (in general and the Black community, in particular), as one of perception and not grounded. Contending: 

“The word mistrust was repeated often as some witnesses from the police service, mental health, education and health services felt that the system was not on their side. Once we interrogated the data, we did find some evidence of biases, but often it was a perception that the wider society could not be trusted. For some groups historic experience of racism still haunts the present and there was a reluctance to acknowledge that the UK had become open and fairer”.

Sewell contention put simply, “we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged” against ethnic minorities and that, whereas “impediments and disparities” do exist, they are varied, and that, “ironically”, very few of them are “directly to do with racism”. He asserts that, too often, ‘racism’ is the “catch-all explanation” and can be “simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined”.  This is conjoined with his argument that the evidence shows that “geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion” have more “significant impact on life chances” than the existence of racism. Sewell claims the term “institutional racism” should be applied only when “deep-seated racism can be proven on a systemic level” and not be used as a general “catch-all phrase for any microaggression, witting or unwitting”. 

It is stated that the purpose of the report was to provide the UK with a “road map for racial fairness” and while there were still real obstacles, there were also “practical ways to surmount them”, but that this becomes “much harder” if people from “ethnic minority backgrounds” absorb a “fatalistic narrative” that says the “deck is permanently stacked against them” however, his approach intends to “dispel some myths” and reach a more “nuanced view”. One argument used is that the “big challenge” of our age is not “overt racial prejudice”,  but that it is “building on and advancing” the progress won by the “struggles of the past 50 years”, which requires taking  a “broader, dispassionate” look at what has been holding some people back. It advises against the “accusatory tone” of much of the “current rhetoric” on race, and the “pessimism” about what has been and what more can be achieved.

This flawed analysis ignores and dismisses decades of considered research on issues of race.  It is important to consider the indication that that the publication of the 1999 Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was a “watershed moment”, with this inquiry having “forced the establishment” to accept that institutional racism existed in contemporary Britain; elevating its definition “above the political fray” and taking it away from those who “sought to defend the Metropolitan police at any cost”.  It has been pointed out that this illustrates how damaging it is when racial prejudice and stereotyping are allowed to go “unchallenged in powerful institutions that exert control over people’s lives”. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report set a precedent that we should measure institutional racism, the “collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin”, not by the “presence or absence of intent to cause harm”, but by the “impact on people’s lives”. The editor of the Observer correctly asserts that this is the “history” within which the Sewell Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities needs to be “located”. 

Amazingly, Sewell fails to address the systemic and institutional racism underscoring the tragedy at Grenfell and the hostile climate created against the Windrush generation and their descendants in deliberate governmental policies, except one passing reference in the report which asserts that recent instances where “ethnic minority communities have rightly felt let down”, such as the “Grenfell tragedy” or the “Windrush scandal” sparked genuine national grief over the traumatic loss of lives, and widespread anger and remorse over the mistreatment of fellow citizens. Nevertheless, the commission accuses “unidentified people” of devaluing the term “institutional racism” through “linguistic inflation” . In a damning indictment, it has been pointed out that, even as it claims to “affirm the Macpherson definition”, it “dilutes” it from the “first pages”, the Commission arguing that the term should be used only when “deep-seated racism can be proven on a systemic level” and implies that acts that are “well-meaning” cannot be racist. The editor states:

“This enables it to bat away perhaps the most egregious example of institutional discrimination in recent decades – the Windrush scandal – because it did not “come about by design” and was “certainly not deliberately targeted”. Black Britons who moved here legally as children were unlawfully deported as adults, refused re-entry to the UK, denied access to life saving healthcare they had paid for through their taxes, and impoverished through employment bans. The report does not even mention that the courts have found that  the “right to rent” policy that requires landlords to check the immigration status of tenants to be racially discriminatory. It passes no comment on the fact that the government is continuing to take decisions that put children born in the UK at risk of deportation as adults”.

These omissions can only be explained by “understanding the political motivations” of this report and that this is no “independent review of the evidence on racial disparities” but is “driven by an ideological belief” that racial inequalities are down to “individual failures” rather than structural factors or institutional discrimination. An explanation of why the review “waters down the definition of institutional racism”, is because to find instances where it still exists would “interfere with its apparent belief” that “people of colour should stop complaining and be grateful for their lot”. This is explained as the report’s “second serious failing”, namely the “highly partial analysis” of racial inequalities. From “health to education, employment to criminal justice”, the report ignores decades of research to assert that “disparities arise primarily as a product of poor choices, rather than a complex mix of structural factors and individual agency”. So, it tells us that:

“Educational failure is chiefly a product of family breakdown. Poor employment outcomes are mainly a product of bad choices and ignorance. On health outcomes, experts have highlighted how the commission cherry picked data to support a misleading narrative. On crime and policing, it ignores the Lammy review’s finding of 'overt discrimination' in the criminal justice system and does not even mention that police were twice as likely to issue fines to black and Asian young men under lockdown regulations as their white peers.....The report caricatures mainstream antiracist discourse beyond recognition. To take it at face value would be to accept that everyone who thinks there is structural discrimination in the UK also believes that British people of colour are defined primarily through victimhood, or that no pockets of ethnic minority success exist, or that nothing has got better since the 1960s. The irony is that the commission commits the very sin it tries to tar mainstream antiracism with: it sloppily ignores evidence and reality in service of ideology.....Any good-faith analysis of racial disparities in Britain would acknowledge things have got better on many measures. But it would also explore why the disproportionate use of stop and search on black people has increased significantly since the Lawrence inquiry; why families of black victims complain they are not taken seriously by the police; why black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth; and what links exist between someone’s ethnicity and their likelihood of being poor, living in bad housing and suffering ill health”.

That it has been affirmed that structural racism is an “important factor” in ethnic disparities in health will not come as a surprise to anyone who has “looked at the evidence”. Several decades of research clearly shows that racism in all its forms, particularly structural racism, is a “fundamental cause of ethnic differences” in socioeconomic status, adverse health outcomes, and ethnic inequities in health. However, “30 page section on health” in the report has the potential to undo several decades of “irrefutable peer reviewed research evidence on ethnic disparities”, previous governments’ reports, and independent reviews all reaching similar conclusions: “ethnic minorities have the worst health outcomes on almost all health parameters”.  Razal, Majeed and Esmail advise that the Sewell Report falsely concludes that deprivation, “family structures” and geography, not ethnicity, are key risk factors for health inequalities. They further share that it ignores the “overwhelming evidence” that systemic racism, and in particular, residential segregation, which is rising in the UK, is a “major driver” of ethnic differences in socioeconomic status.  This is despite the “wealth of evidence” that segregation also affects health due to “poorer quality education, employment opportunities, and poorer access to resources to enhance health”. The “concentration of poverty” in these areas leads to exposure to higher levels of “multiple chronic and acute psychosocial stressors”, greater “clustering of these stressors”, and greater exposure to “undesirable social and environmental conditions”. They state that previous research also shows that segregation is “independently associated” with “late diagnosis and inferior survival rates” in lung or breast cancer.

Whilst the health data are “inconsistent and incomplete”, there is still a conclusion that life expectancy is improving for ethnic minorities. Razal, Majeed and Esmail advise us that this is not true, relying as it does, on two reports on life expectancy in Scotland “where only 3% of UK ethnic minorities live”. They indicate that the Marmot Review in England shows that health inequalities have “widened overall”, life expectancy has “stalled”, and the amount of time people spend in poor health has “increased” over the past decade. They advise that the situation is “much worse” for ethnic minority groups, who have “higher rates of deprivation and poorer health outcomes”. The report’s data, which shows “lower life expectancy” in Black and South Asian people compared to people with White ethnicities, “does not support its own conclusions”. Razal, Majeed and Esmail further indicate that the “devastating effects” of covid-19 on ethnic minorities have “exposed and aggravated” the “structural socioeconomic disadvantages” experienced by ethnic minority communities. There is no evidence of “genetic risk factors” for covid-19 as the report claims. They point out that there is now “sufficient evidence” that ethnic disparities in covid-19 are partly due to high-risk public facing jobs, living conditions such as “multigenerational households, poverty, chronic comorbidities”, as well as racial discrimination and the effects of structural racism such as “residential segregation”. 

In its review of the report, the Institute of Race Relations states that both the findings and the recommendations of the government-commissioned Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report “fit neatly” with the government’s attempts, post-Brexit, to portray the British nation as a “beacon of good race relations and a diversity model”, in the report’s words, for “white majority countries” across the globe. The methodology of the report appears to be one that, in “severing issues of race from class” and treating issues of structural racism as “historic” but not contemporary, leads to the “stigmatisation” of some ethnic minorities on the back of the “valorisation” of others. Black Caribbean people are contrasted with Black Africans and deemed to have “internalised past injustices to the detriment of their own social advancement”. While much is made of the differences between communities, “primarily in educational attainment and elite employment”, there is no attempt to address the “common ethnic minority experience of structural racism” within areas such as the criminal justice system. Where racism in Britain is acknowledged in the report, the emphasis is placed on “online abuse, which is very much in line with the wider drift in British politics and society” away from understanding racism in terms of structural factors and “locating it instead in prejudice and bigotry”.

However, the obscene reactionary historical revisionism of the report is clearly demonstrated in its false narrative attempting to veil and minimise the disempowerment, under development and exploitation that were core features of British colonialism. More insidious is that it attempts to rehabilitate the institution of British slavery and its consequent horrors, exploitation and racist denigration inflicted on the African people. Sewell argues that ‘Making of Modern Britain’ teaching resource is the Commission's response to negative calls for “decolonising the curriculum”. He asserts that, neither the “banning” of White authors or “token expressions of Black achievement” will help to “broaden” young minds and that, rather than “bringing down statues”, all children should reclaim their “British heritage”. Advocating for the creation of a “teaching resource” that looks at the “influence” of the UK, particularly during the “Empire period”, with the emphasis being to see how “Britishness” influenced the Commonwealth and local communities, and how the Commonwealth and local communities “influenced” what we now know as modern Britain. Sewell argues that there is a “new story” about the Caribbean experience which “speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering” but how, “culturally”, African people “transformed themselves” into a “re-modelled African/Britain”. 

As Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, indicates, this report puts a “positive spin” on the slave trade and the Runnymede Trust think-tank called the comments on slavery nothing short of being “shocking and racist”. Professor of economic history at the University of Hull, David Richardson, profoundly points out that:

“To look for positives in the experiences of the enslaved is a “grotesque parody of research” on slavery, much of which emphasises the “heroic efforts of those who looked to escape its brutality”. British Caribbean slavery “consumed” Africans, yet contemporaries seeking to justify it on economic grounds often “asserted precisely the cultural benefits for its victims” that the commission now proposes we teach schoolchildren. Slavery has no “redeeming features”. Many working-class people in late 18th-century Britain understood that and supported the abolition of the slave trade. It is “disturbing” that the commission should casually align itself with those who looked “racially to justify it in the past”.

Or is it more the case as shared by David Olusoga, that the authors “stumble, ill-prepared and overconfident, into the arena of history”. “Shockingly, the authors – perhaps unwittingly – deploy a version of an argument that was used by the slave owners themselves in defence of slavery 200 years ago: the idea that by becoming culturally British, black people were somehow beneficiaries of the system.”

Our analysis on this review of the Sewell report operates on the assumption of racism being driven by precepts of white biological, cultural, economic, and political racial superiority. It is also a social phenomenon that is dynamically constantly evolving and operating on individual, structural and institutional levels, constantly interacting with other social phenomena such as race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, and age being amoeba like, constantly changing form and substance and often creating new and hybrid manifestations unrecognised by the official legal system and western academics. It is a debilitating process which dehumanizes, marginalises and disempowers Black and other nonwhite peoples and privileges white patriarchal western society. The concepts of race and racism have evolved throughout the twentieth century and into the 21st century. To see what is going on we need to engage a multidisciplinary intersectional analysis, something the Sewell report fails to do. 

Alana Lentin indicates that while the “idea that racism is accompanied by its denial” is well established, the rejection of racism by proponents of positions that “hinder the cause of racial justice is the discursive next step in post racial’ racism”. The dominant position within philosophy of race that racism is, first and foremost, a “moral failing” has unwittingly contributed to the emergence of “not racism” as a “dominant expression” in race thinking today, with “not racism” being in itself a “form of racist violence”. 

We are advised by the late Rev. Dr Martin Luther King jr., in the context of the Vietnam war but equally applicable in our present discourse, there comes a time when “silence is betrayal”. Similarly, complicity in and denial of racism is a betrayal of the numerous victims, past, present, and future, of this invidious and pervasive social phenomenon. As Dr. King advises:

“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak”. 

The equivocal Sewell Report, shrouded as it is, in its historical amnesia and cognitive dissonance, is a betrayal and as such, we reject it without reservation and call on the government to discard it in the dustbin of false historical narrative and appoint a credible commission of inquiry, with recognized experts on the issue of race and racism (if indeed yet further research is needed), so that we can begin to come to terms with the invasive virus of systemic, structural and institutional racism that continues as a core feature of the fabric of British society.

[1]    David Goodhart (2021): “The Sewell Commission is a Game-Changer On How Britain Talks About Race” In the Policy Exchange Website, March 31. Available online <https://policyexchange.org.uk/the-sewell-commission-is-a-game-changer-for-how-britain-talks-about-race/>

[2]    Equality and Human Rights Commission (2021): “EHRC Chair Responds to Report From Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities” In the Equality and Human Rights Commission website, 31 March. Available online <https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/ehrc-chair-responds-report-commission-race-and-ethnic-disparities>

[3]    The Editor of the Observer (2021): “The Observer View on the Sewell Commission's Race Report” In the Guardian, 4 April. Available online <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/04/the-observer-view-on-the-sewell-commissions-race-report>

[4]    Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021): “Structural Racism is a Fundamental Cause and Driver of Ethnic Disparaties” In BJM, March 31. Available online <https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/ehrc-chair-responds-report-commission-race-and-ethnic-disparities>

[5]    Adam Forest (2021): “Who are the Authors Behind Government's Race Report?” In the Independent, 31 March. Available online <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/race-commission-report-uk-racism-b1824922.html>; George Martin (2021): “Who is Tony Sewell? Controversial Chair of the Race and Ethnic Disparaties Commission Behind Major Review” In the BBC 4 Today website. Available online <https://inews.co.uk/news/tony-sewell-race-and-ethnic-disparities-commission-review-chair-937598 > 

[6]    Adam Forest (2021) supra.; George Martin (2021) supra.

[7]    Ibid.

[8]    Ibid.

[9]    George Martin (2021) supra.

[10]    Jasmine Cameron-Chilesh (2021): “Johnson's Top Black Adviser Quits as Race Report Backlash Intensifies” In the Financial Times, 1 April. Available online <https://www.ft.com/content/9c472909-094f-488d-8b14-43837835531b >

[11]    The Editor of the Observer (2021) supra.

[12]    Tony Sewell (2021): Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparaties: The Report. Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparaties. Available online <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf>

[13]    Ibid.

[14]    Ibid.

[15]    Ibid.

[16]    The Editor of the Observer (2021) supra.

[17]    Ibid.

[18]      Ibid.

[19]    Tony Sewell (2021) supra.

[20]    The Editor of the Observer (2021) supra.

[21]    Ibid.

[22]    Ibid.

[23]    Ibid.

[24]    Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.; M.S. Razai, H. K. N. Kankam and A. Majeed et. al. (2021): “Mitigating Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 and Beyond” In BJM. January 14

[25]    Ibid.

[26]      D. Brady and L. Burton (2016):  Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Available online <https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199914050.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199914050>; D. R. Williams, J. A. Lawrence and B. A Davis (2019): “Racism and Health: Evidence and Needed Research” In Annu Rev Public Health Vol.40:105-25; Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[27]     D. R. Williams, J. A. Lawrence and B. A Davis (2019) supra.; UK Government (2020):  Ethnicity facts and figures. Available online <https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/>; Office for National Statistics (2011): 2011 Census. Available online <https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/2011censuskeystatisticsforenglandandwales/2012-12-11#ethnic-group>; Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[28]    H. Landrine, I. Corral and J. G. L. Lee et. al. (2017):  “Residential Segregation and Racial Cancer Disparities: a Systematic Review” In J Racial Ethn Health Disparities Vol. 4:1195-205; Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[29]    Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[30]       Social Metrics Commision (2020):  Measuring Poverty 2020: A Report of the Social Metrics Commission. Available online <https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Measuring-Poverty-2020-Web.pdf>; Department for Work and Pensions (2020): Statistics on the Number and Percentage of People Living in Low Income Households for Financial Years 1994/95 to 2018/19. DWP, 2020. Available online <https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/households-below-average-income-hbai—2>; Ruby McGregor-Smith (2017): The Time for Talking is Over, Now is the Time to Act: The McGregor-Smith Review. UK Government. Available online <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/594336/race-in-workplace-mcgregor-smith-review.pdf>; David Lammy (2017): The Lammy Review: An Independent Review Into the Treatment of, and Outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System. Available online <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/643001/lammy-review-final-report.pdf>; Cabinet Office (2017): Race Disparity Audit: Summary Findings From the Ethnicity Facts and Figures. CabinetOffice. Available online <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/686071/Revised_RDA_report_March_2018.pdf>; Institute of Health Equity (2020): Health Equity in England: the Marmot Review 10 years On. Available online <https://www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/upload/publications/2020/Health%20Equity%20in%20England_The%20Marmot%20Review%2010%20Years%20On_full%20report.pdf>;  Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[31]    Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[32]    M.S. Razai, H. K. N. Kankam and A. Majeed et. al. (2021) supra.; T. Osama, M. S. Razai and A. Majeed (2021): “COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation: Addressing the United Kingdom’s Colour-Blind Strategy” In J R Soc Med.  Mar 9; Mohammad S. Razal, Azeem Majeed and Aneez Esmail (2021) supra.

[33]    Institute of Race Relations (2021): “IRR: Sewell Report Seeks to Sideline Structural Factors Attached to Racism. Institute of Race Relations Press Statement” In the Institute of Race Relations website, March 31. Available online <https://irr.org.uk/article/irr-responds-to-commission-race-ethnic-disparities-report/ >

[34]    Ibid.

[35]    Ibid.

[36]    Tony Sewell (2021) supra.

[37]    Jasmine Cameron-Chilesh (2021) supra.

[38]    David Richardson (2021): “Race in Britain: How Did the Sewell Report Get it so Wrong?: Letter to the Editor” In The Guardian, Thursday, 1 April. Available online <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/race-in-britain-how-did-the-sewell-report-get-it-so-wrong>

[39] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/sewell-race-report-historical-young-people-britain

[40]    Humanities at Stanford (2010): “Changing Perceptions of Race and Ethnicity” In Examining Conversations About Race With a Multidisciplinary Scope. Available Online <http://shc.stanford.edu/news/research/examining-conversations-about-race-multidisciplinary-scope>; Andrea Romei and Salvatore Ruggieri (2013): “A Multidisciplinary Survey of Discrimination Analysis” In The Knowledge Engineering Review Vol. 00:0, 1-54; Dean E. Mundy (2016): “Bridging the Divide: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Diversity Research and the Implication for Public Relations” In Research Journal of the Institute of Public Relations, Vol.3(1) August. Avalaible Online < https://prjournal.instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/Dean-Mundy-1-1.pdf>; David R. Roediger and Donald M. Shaffer (eds.) (2016): The Construction of Whiteness: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Race Formation and the Meaning of White identity. USA, University Press of Mississippi  

[41]    Alana Lentin (2018): “Beyond Denial: 'Not Racism' as Racist Violence” In CONTINUUM: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 32 (4). Available online <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10304312.2018.1480309>

[42]    Martin Luther King jr (1967): “Speech on the War in Vietnam” In the Rethinking Schools website. Available online <https://rethinkingschools.org/special-collections/when-silence-is-betrayal/>

[43]Ibid.