What do we mean by racism?

The term ‘racism’ is often poorly understood.

It’s often described in an extremely simplified way, where racism is reduced to a distrust or dislike of a particular group of people because of their skin colour, nationality and ethnic origins. However, in reality, racism extends far beyond this definition.

Racism can manifest in a number of different ways, which can be grouped into four distinct levels:

Interpersonal racism:
Racism can be present in people’s day-to-day interactions with each other. This can take a range of direct and indirect forms, including overt racism, like abusive attacks on someone’s identity using violent or dehumanising language, and much more subtle expressions of prejudice, known as micro-aggressions.

Cultural or social racism:
Racist attitudes can become culturally embedded to the point where they become a part of people’s everyday lives, such that the importance and value of one ethnic group’s identity, appearance, culture and way of life are seen above others. This contributes to a sense of superiority over the traditions, culture and practices of the dominant ethnic group, based on the assumption that this cultural viewpoint is the right way and the best way - everything else is treated as an anomaly.

Institutional racism:
Racism can become embedded within an organisation through rules, customs, processes and practices that have been planned without regard to the potential impacts on people from minority ethnic groups. This may or may not coincide with directly racist actions on the part of an institution or its employees. In this context, the impacts of the institution’s work and the way it operates are racist, regardless of whether the people within the institution have racist attitudes themselves.

Structural racism:
When racism becomes embedded in the culture, institutions and policymaking of a nation, it becomes structural. This leads to Black and minority ethnic people having disparate outcomes to their white counterparts across multiple aspects of their lives, including their health, education, employment and socio-economic status.

The history of race and racism

To properly understand racism, it's important to have a shared understanding of what race actually means.

The concept is derived from long-disproved anthropological theories born out of 18th - 20th Century Western Europe. These theories claimed that humans could be divided into racial groups based on physical and behavioural traits linked to ethnicity, nationality and related concepts like shared language and culture. However, white populations across the world were not ‘racialised’ in the same way that non-white populations were, meaning that ‘race’ is strongly linked to skin colour.

For white people, theories of racialisation were used to paint them as ‘naturally superior’, while the racialisation of non-white groups was primarily used to justify violence towards them and their oppression under the inhumane systems of chattel slavery, colonialism and imperialism.

The current use of the terms ‘race’ and ‘racial’ have developed out of these false notions of racial difference, informed by centuries of deeply entrenched racist stereotypes. Over hundreds of years, these racist ways of thinking have been used to structure society in a way that provides white Scottish and British groups with economic, social and political advantages over non-white people.

For more information, visit the CRER website.

What are the implications of race and racism?

Racism can have a significant negative influence on people’s mental well-being and physical health. For instance, we know that interpersonal racism can contribute to people’s experiences of racial trauma, conditions like anxiety, and stress-related physical reactions.

When racism becomes embedded at cultural and institutional levels, this can reduce people’s access to essential services and support. For instance, if people are more likely to experience interpersonal racism within a particular setting and receive lower-quality services and support, their experiences and outcomes will likely be worse than their white counterparts, making them less likely to access the same services and support.

Unfortunately, this type of differential treatment has become commonplace for many Black and minority ethnic people, contributing to widespread inequalities within Scottish society that have persisted for generations.

To learn more about the implications of structural racism in Scotland, readers may want to visit CRER’s ‘Ten Things We Need to Say about Racism’ page.

3,145 charges were reported in 2022-23, which is more than 8 charges being made per day on average. This is significantly higher than the number of all other forms of hate crime combined, despite known issues with underreporting.
Almost a third of minority ethnic respondents to the 2023 Glasgow Household Survey were concerned about hate crime or harassment due to ethnic origin, race or nationality (compared with 3% of white respondents).
Research has shown that racism is prevalent in schools, with both subtle and overt forms impacting BME pupils and teachers. Racially motivated bullying incidents reached a peak in 2020/21, with over 1,200 incidents recorded in Scotland's schools. However, under-reporting and ineffective recording practices make the true extent of racism in schools unclear.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission found that racial harassment is widespread in British universities, affecting individuals' mental health, education, and careers. A 2020 report on BME students at Glasgow University revealed that over half had experienced racial harassment. In 2021, Dundee University's survey showed that 24% of BAME students and 24% of BAME staff reported witnessing or experiencing racism.
Communities from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds face significant health inequalities. For instance, individuals from Black African, Caribbean, and South Asian backgrounds are at a higher risk of developing Type-2 diabetes due to a combination of biological, socio-economic, and lifestyle factors, including racial inequalities and racism. Additionally, Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities often experience barriers when trying to access healthcare, have a higher suicide rate, and poorer mental health due to poverty.
Racial inequality in healthcare also results in higher mortality rates for minority ethnic groups. For example, Black women are nearly four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women in the UK, and women from Asian ethnic backgrounds are twice as likely to face this outcome compared to white women. Furthermore, BME communities are more likely to experience poor mental health due to their increased exposure to poverty, adverse life experiences, and discrimination. Unfortunately, they often receive lower quality and less effective mental health support due to institutional racism in Scotland. Additionally, experiences of racial trauma arising from encountering or witnessing racism are often overlooked in the Scottish healthcare sector, leading to unresponsive mental health services for minority ethnic people. Despite these challenges, there has been progress in recent years in terms of collecting and analysing equalities data – a crucial step in understanding and addressing racialized health inequalities.
The most recent statistics from 2018-23 show that the rate of relative poverty in Scotland was more than double for those from BME groups compared to the majority ethnic white Scottish/British group.
More than one-third of all people from a minority ethnic background are trapped in deep or very deep poverty. The poverty rates for children in BME families are higher than in white families, with 48% of children from minority ethnic families living in relative poverty in 2021. The lack of detailed ethnicity breakdowns of poverty rates in Scotland prevents a nuanced understanding of BME communities’ experiences of poverty and leads to less effective anti-poverty strategies.
The employment gap between minority ethnic individuals and white individuals in Scotland was 10% in 2022-23, with BME individuals more likely to work in low-paid sectors and face challenges in securing jobs appropriate to their qualifications due to discrimination.
Research from the Department for Work and Pensions found that job applicants with 'BME names' had to send out 16 applications to receive a successful response compared to 9 applications for those with 'white names', despite submitting the same application. This discrepancy extends to public sector jobs where BME candidates have poorer outcomes, being less likely to get shortlisted for interviews and successfully appointed.
Research has indicated that BME communities are more likely to live in the private rental sector than own homes or reside in social housing, putting them at higher risk of poverty, unstable letting, and higher rents. Additionally, minority ethnic households are more likely to experience overcrowding, with ethnic minority families in Scotland being nearly four times more likely to live in overcrowded households, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This overcrowding has made BME families more susceptible to the spread of COVID-19 due to difficulties in social distancing, highlighting how structural racism and long-standing inequalities have increased health risks for these communities.
Furthermore, homelessness is a growing issue for BME individuals in Scotland, with 11% of homelessness applications in 2022/23 coming from minority ethnic individuals. Notably, BME applicants for homelessness assistance spent an average of over 290 days in temporary accommodation, compared to 235 days for white applicants, with African community applicants spending the longest, averaging 336 days in temporary housing. These disparities underline the challenges faced by BME individuals in accessing stable housing and the need to address the underlying inequalities.
Scotland’s political institutions and decision-making structures lack representation of BME communities. For instance, in 2021, only 4.6% of MSPs were from a BME background, with all eight BME MSPs being from South Asian backgrounds. In local government, only 31 out of 1,227 councillors were from a BME background, and over half of Scottish local authorities had no minority ethnic representation.
Furthermore, BME representation is low in professions like policing, local government and teaching, affecting perceptions and contributing to racial inequalities across many systems and structures. For example, in 2022, only 1.6% of police officers in Police Scotland identified as BME, despite BME people making up 7.1% of the pupil population. As Scotland becomes more diverse, it is crucial for workforce, political, and decision-making representation to reflect this diversity.

So, does everyone experience racism?

While everyone experiences ‘racialisation’ in some way, racism typically affects those who are adversely (or negatively) racialised: this primarily concerns Black and minority ethnic people.

This term generally refers to the wide range of ethnic groups who have an intersecting history of colonialism, empire and enslavement and/or their associated ideologies; those who most commonly face racism in contemporary Scotland. This includes people from Black African and Caribbean backgrounds, Asian backgrounds, and Arab groups, as well as many of those with mixed and multiple ethnicities, alongside other non-white ethnicities.

White minority ethnic groups in Scotland, such as those from Irish or Polish backgrounds, can also experience prejudice and discrimination due to their backgrounds. However, this often takes the form of xenophobic prejudice rather than racism, as most white minority groups are not racialised in the same way as their Black and minority counterparts. There are, of course, exceptions to this, as some Gypsy/Traveller and Roma people, as well as some Jewish groups, do experience adverse racialisation and racism.

This is not to say that white Scottish or white British people cannot encounter disadvantages in their lives; however, race and racism are not the root of structural disadvantages they may face.

Where it gets more complicated…

It should be noted that under the Equality Act 2010, ‘race’ has its own legal definition. This focuses on colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins, and a racial group is defined by reference to these.

The law on racial discrimination protects everyone equally under this definition. Nevertheless, it’s important to be mindful of these distinctions and how racialisation works in practice to shape people’s experiences of racism.