After coronavirus, black and brown people must be at the heart of Britain’s story | Afua Hirsch | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/coronavirus-black-brown-people-britain-ethnic-minorities
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ae89105fc48c9be5a5ed542078d3e1fdb9b40535/0_66_4039_2424/master/4039.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
But there was one fundamental problem. The millions of Africans, Asians and other people who came to be regarded as “ethnic minorities” (though they weren’t a minority in the empire) – and who made both this wartime victory, and the new welfare state institutions possible – were not part of the story. And what followed shows that when you exclude people from the narrative, they become excluded in real life. The idea of being entitled to a share in Britishness, and its national wealth, erased the contribution of black, Asian and ethnic minority people. And, over the decades that followed, the breakdown of the social contract – as the state remorselessly cut back its spending and stopped fulfilling its side of the bargain – was blamed on the presence of those visible, allegedly unentitled “outsiders”.
It’s beyond ironic that black and Asian people in Britain underpinned the creation of the institutions that so often define Britishness, not least the NHS. Yet that same postwar era also laid the foundations for the inadequate access to healthcare, housing and secure labour that must be part of the reason why minorities are so disproportionately affected by today’s coronavirus crisis.
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