Are the UK and US Really All that Different When It Comes To Race?
Hint: No.
If 2020 accomplished nothing else, it got the world talking a lot more about race. Whether this was a good thing or not is debatable. But as something of a sideline to the major debates about systemic racism, affirmative action, “stolen land” and all the rest, I’ve several times heard a version of an interesting proposition. Generally, the proposition is something along the lines that the United Kingdom (or other countries) doesn’t experience race with the same salience as the US. I’ve always been a bit puzzled by the vagueness of the statement and exactly what it is meant to convey. There appear to me to be several options.
First, it could mean that, to some extent, racism is a bigger problem in the US than the United Kingdom.
Second, perhaps US news media and politicians are neurotically obsessed with race in a way British counterparts are not.
Third, a potential argument would be something of a complex and nuanced point…that British and American contexts of race understandably vary, given different histories, different demographics, etc.
Before considering each in turn, first, a caveat: the British deflection to and obsession with US racism (shared by Americans themselves) is odd. How did the US become the default by which all else is compared? Obviously, with genocides in China and Myanmar, endless India/Pakistan strife, an imperialist war in the Ukraine, multiple ethnic/religious wars and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, etc., there are better benchmarks for naked racism than the US.
That aside, let’s look at the possibilities.
Is the US More Racist than the UK?
The first option, that the US is more racist than the UK is probably the easiest to dismiss. There’s little evidence for this. If anything, generally the data suggest that both the US and UK are historic for massive, unprecedented declines in racism. This doesn’t mean there’s no individual acts of racism. But the empirical evidence is clear that US racism is at historic lows. Pew Research Center data suggested that, if anything, Americans are more positive about diversity than the British, on average. Likewise, racial harassment is less common in the US, according to several pieces of data.
Hate crimes are generally rare in both countries, but comparison data is difficult to come by. Taken at face value, the US reported 12,411 hate crime incidents in 2021 (out of a country of 330 million, and most crimes were property crimes), whereas the UK reported a comparatively astounding 124,104. These numbers are so out of whack as to best be explained by differences in hate speech laws (the UK has less protections for speech and “hate speech” can result in an arrest in the UK), differences in reporting, differences in definition, etc., rather than concluding the UK is a racist wasteland.
Let’s boil down on some specific data points. One intriguing study by Charlesworth and Banaji examined explicit racial preference in the US over time, from 2007 to 2016, including over 4 million individual responses. Results were coded from -3 to +3, with higher scores indicating greater preference for the dominant (White versus Black) group. In this case 0 would indicate neutrality or no preference for White over Black individuals. I’ll note, as a bit of statistical inside baseball, the “standard deviation” (or typical amount by which individual scores vary from the mean) was reported as 1.13. Knowing this gives a sense of whether a difference score is meaningful, or likely to be statistical noise. In 2007, the overall mean preference was .30, much lower than the scale’s standard deviation, indicating only a tiny overall preference for Whites versus Blacks, and possibly just statistical noise. By 2016, that number had dropped to .17, so small as to be mostly likely explained as statistical noise. Indeed, extrapolating the trend to 2020, the authors expected the preference to approach 0 by 2020. Put simply, the US has reached a point where racial preferences are difficult to observe empirically.
The other interesting piece of data is on economics. In the US, descendants of slaves have less wealth than either White or Asian Americans. This would seem to suggest “anti-Blackness” is real, except that more recent Black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean actually do rather well (and, it’s likewise well known that Asian Americans now outperform White Americans on most outcomes). This suggests a kind of class inertia rather than racism as a core problem. There’s little question that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow contribute to this, though so do current cultural issues such as high rates of fatherlessness and the “acting White” pressure on Black schoolkids during school years. Nonetheless, it’s important to distinguish past inequities from the charge of current racism. Unfortunately, even past inequities may remain impactful well beyond their removal from either policy, law, or public mores. And, sadly, there may be no particular policy, no matter how progressive, to quickly undo that.
Interestingly, a classic, if pessimistic, example of this comes from…England! In a fascinating analysis Michael Lind examined income disparities between Brits with traditionally Norman last names (the fancy-pants Frenchy sounding stuff like Mountbatten) versus Anglo-Saxon last names (Smith, Jones, etc.) Way back in 1066 a Norman minority invaded England, introducing a Norman ruling class that has, more or less, formed the British elite ever since. Lind found income disparities between those with Norman names versus Anglo-Saxon names…almost 1000 years after the invasion of 1066, and long since the two groups seriously considered each other to be distinct ethnicities.
It's worth noting I’m neglecting Latinos a bit. That’s both because Latinos are a relatively small minority in the UK (about 250,000) and who, exactly, is Latino is kind of murky even in the US. The short version is that many Latinos are actually biethnic; intermarriage rates for Latinos in the US are very high, and typically by the 3rd generation they become culturally, linguistically and phenotypically assimilated to a high degree. Perhaps it’s taboo to say but, in the US, many (but certainly not all) self-described Latinos are pretty garden-variety, cookie-cutter patriotic Americans (and that’s a good thing!)
My best guess is that both the US and UK can cherry-pick different pools of data to try to make the other look worse and I’m generally wary of the methods in “country rankings” which often do little than flatter the ranker’s prejudices. I think the best thing is to simply say both the US and UK fare well on race attitudes compared to much of the rest of the world. For the US, on the singular issue of 2020, police violence, the best evidence suggests that class issues, not race, predict these outcomes. As noted above, economic data too, do not suggest a pattern of White supremacy. We should remain alert to injustices given the history of slavery and racism, but the 2020 “systemic racism” narrative has been a moral panic, plain and simple. Which brings us to the second possibility.
Are US News Media and Political Elites More Obsessed With Race Than in the UK?
Are US news media and politicians (and academics) neurotically obsessed with race? It’s hard to argue against this. Maybe Canada is worse, but it’s hard to defend the US on this score. Zack Goldberg, a political scientist at the Manhattan Institute, has examined news media coverage of topics related to racism in US media. As shown below (graph courtesy of Mr. Goldberg), the incidence of the terms “racist” or “racism” in US news media has skyrocketed over the past decade, even as actual racist attitudes have attained historic lows:
Research scientist David Rozado analyzed similar data for the UK news media (graph courtesy of Mr. Rozado). This data is presented below:
As can be seen, we see the same trend in UK news media as in US news media. Goldberg and Rozado use slightly different metrics on the y-axis (percentage v frequency) so they’re not direct comparable. However, looking at some of the data on US and UK news media boiled down more specifically within Rozado’s work it looks like the frequency of words related to racism, White supremacy, etc., in US and UK newspapers is roughly similar.
This obsessiveness with race and racism is well-documented to be the domain of elite, college educated progressive Whites in the US. They are often to the left of actual racial minorities on race issues. Presumably this is true in the UK as well. Curiously, according to data published by Eric Kaufman at the Manhattan Institute, White progressives show a similar pattern in both the US and UK in tending to migrate to Whiter neighborhoods to live than the supposedly racist conservatives they decry online. Progressives tend to say they want to live in diverse neighborhoods but don’t follow up on that in practice. They talk the talk of diversity but literally walk to live in less diverse neighborhoods.
We seem to, perhaps, be coming to our senses though. DEI efforts soared in 2020, but people seem to have realized they are mainly a disaster. Approval of Black Lives Matter has dropped, both as research has come out suggesting race isn’t a big predictor of police violence, and the main BLM organization squandered donations on mansions and other financial scandals. The US Supreme Court ended Affirmative Action which, despite its good intentions, was actual systemic racial discrimination.
This is somewhat a complicated issue as, arguably, the UK appears to have contracted its own moderate case of race (and gender) moral panic, but my impression is that this issue just isn’t as screeching in most places as the US and Canada. But given the frequency of coverage in UK and US news media, perhaps my impression is wrong. Still, I say the British have a point here. Sorry about the infectious wokeness.
Is the Context of Race in the US and UK Different?
On the third point…the context of race differs between countries…this is obviously true, but at the same time difficult to be sure what point we’re meant to take from this. Do countries such as the UK or US get blamed only for having slaves, or are they credited also for ending slavery, both internally and (ironically as an element of colonization) ending slavery internationally in places like Africa and Asia (at least legally, 30 million slaves still exist in the world)? To be fair, the UK can take credit for ending slavery earlier, without a bloody civil war, and using colonization to force the end of legal slavery in much of the rest of the world. Then again, the UK brought slaves to North America in the first place, there were strong abolitionist movements in the US from the get-go and fighting a civil war to end slavery isn’t a trivial commitment. In general, though, both the UK and US were world leaders in promoting a vision of humanism that ended legal slavery which had existed worldwide and in most cultures prior to the 19th century. We could probably argue this endlessly, but my suspicion though is the US and UK are more similar than different.
What about in the modern context? Let’s look at some specific numbers.
Take the issue of interracial marriage. Interracial marriage is common in both the US and UK. In 2017, about 10% of US marriages were interracial, with the numbers closer to 17% for newlyweds. For the UK, in 2011, the numbers were also about 10% of couples being interracial. Interracial marriages are more common in urban environments with a greater mix of ethnicities than more homogeneous communities. In this sense, interracial marriage appears to be driven, not by any lingering racism in either of these countries, but by a combination of availability and need. If one lives in a multiethnic urban hub, interracial marriage is higher than in more homogeneous rural areas.
Issues such as residential segregation are also complex. For instance, one interesting paper found that in the US, Black Americans tended to have more residential segregation, whereas in the UK, that was more true for Asians. However, even varying White groups (Italians, Irish, Scandinavians, etc.) in the US were found to experience residential segregation (indeed my home city of Orlando has a well-known Slavia suburb), suggesting that factors other than skin color or race often drove these effects. People may tend to prefer to be closer to those who are culturally and religiously similar.
There is also an interesting phenomenon regarding representation in television and film media. For example contrary to past underrepresentation, Black actors are now overrepresented on screens in both the US and UK (though this may not extend to behind-the-scenes roles). Here again, the US and at least the UK are on more similar tracks than different.
Divided We Fall?
In conclusion, there are certainly differences in context regarding race across countries. However, on balance, The US and UK are probably more similar than they are different on most measures. Regarding actual racism, both countries can take significant pride that they have reached a historical pinnacle of openness and diversity, without our necessarily believing in an outright racial utopia. Regarding the US’ chattering classes obsession with race, here the UK probably has a fair point, though maybe less than we might have imagined. As for more nuanced issues, well…sure, they’re nuanced. But I don’t think there’s much to say they the US is worse than the UK as trendy as that narrative has become.
People probably employ the “US context” argument for myriad reasons. First, it can defensively distract from embarrassing issues on the home front. Second, as I’ve noted, it’s just trendy…both culturally and likely as a marker of “sophistication”…to reflexively criticize the US. In fairness to my British colleagues, there’s a good reason to argue this itself is, if not an export, at least encouraged by the US’ own weird self-flagellating trend over the past decade. We should probably retire the “But the US…” argument overall…I see little constructive in it and its main output is likely to continue misimpressions and misrepresentations of the fundamentals of race in America.
Strategically, I believe the “But the US…” argument fails as well. It comes across as a deflection when the UK is criticized on race (“Blimey, look at those ungrateful Yanks over the pond, not us”). I actually think the UK should defend it’s record on race (as should the US) but throwing the US under the bus is a poor way to do it. Such deflections rarely end the criticism and merely invite the question of just how different the UK and US are really to which the inevitable answer is “not that much” however much people in either country might like to think differently. In truth, all Western democracies are in Great Awokening disaster rowboat together. It’s actually an easy rowboat to defend if people simply stop deferring to an extreme minority of moral scolds and revisionist historians. It’s fair to express remorse for the uglier aspects of our pasts, but if 2020 taught us anything it’s that it’s possible to overdo it and there’s a difference between learning from history and neurotically obsessing over it. If Brits are going to move past this weird epoch, they’re going to need to be ready to defend the US and the UK’s record on race. And, of course, Americans must be prepared to reciprocate. There are some indications that the Great Awokening may be drawing to a close. Let’s work together, Brits and Americans to bring it to an end for good.