Welsh Government Announces Plan to Become an ‘Anti-Racist Nation’

Owen Evans
By Owen Evans
June 8, 2022UK
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Welsh Government Announces Plan to Become an ‘Anti-Racist Nation’
First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford speaks to Labour Party members at Bridgend College during the launch of the Welsh Labour Local Government campaign in Bridgend, Wales, on April 5, 2022. (Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)

Wales’ Labour-run government has announced its aim to take action to turn Wales into an equitable anti-racist nation through mandatory anti-racism training and lessons for school children and all public bodies.

On Tuesday, the Welsh government announced its Anti-racist Wales Action Plan to “eradicate” racism from the NHS, hospitals, schools, and more in the country.

The plan (pdf) was drawn up by a group co-chaired by Cardiff University’s Prof Emmanuel Ogbonna and Andrew Goodall, permanent secretary to the Welsh government.

Anti-racism Is Marxist Ideology

In the introduction to the plan (pdf), the nationalist-Marxist militant organisation the Black Panthers was quoted: “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” It added that it was inspired by George Floyd to take action.

Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer held his knee against Floyd’s neck and back for approximately nine-and-a-half minutes as Floyd laid handcuffed and face-down on the pavement while another officer restrained his lower body and a third officer knelt on Floyd’s back.

Floyd’s death prompted mass demonstrations in many countries as protestors called for racial justice.

Minister for Social Justice, Jane Hutt said that “the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan for Wales is built on the values of Anti-racism, and calls for actions to be taken in terms of our policies and ways of working rather than putting the burden on ethnic minority people to act.”

Anti-racism is one teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is a Marxist ideology. It defines class struggle between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), as was done with Marxism’s reduction of human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.”

Prof. Emmanuel Ogbonna of Cardiff Business School said in the introduction of the plan that racism is “constantly mutating.”

“Racism is constantly mutating. If we fail to eradicate it, it will continue through generations,” he said. “It becomes a perverse inheritance that expresses itself in different mutations, and that blights the lives of future generations in different ways.

“Many years ago, racism was overt, with many ethnic minority people told directly that they were not wanted. Today, racism has morphed into subtle everyday behaviours but is no less pernicious in its impacts. We want to eradicate racism and we believe that adopting an anti-racist approach is the key to this.”

Wales will also become the first in the UK to make it mandatory to teach black, Asian, and minority ethnic histories and experiences in the new Curriculum for Wales. This is being rolled out to primary schools from September 2022.

It added that “while this work is for the benefit of all children, there is an intersectionality with the experiences and outcomes of children and young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.”

Other measures include anti-racist culture and practices to be embedded in every further education institution and adult learning provider in Wales. A performance goal linked to anti-racism for leaders and reverse mentoring and anti-racism training will also be introduced.

The NHS will also require anti-racist leadership at all levels by direction. All NHS Boards, Trusts, and Special Authorities will need to report demonstrable progress in driving anti-racism at all levels.

To counter “online racist hateful attitudes,” the Welsh said that it is working with Cardiff University’s HateLab which will build tools to identify and track hate speech online with a particular focus on Wales.

‘The Most Important Thing Is Their Skin Colour’

Dr. Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, head of education strategy for Don’t Divide Us, an organisation set up to take a stand against the UK’s “divisive obsession with people’s racial identity,” told The Epoch Times that Wales’s critical race theory led policies is “detrimental to minorities and also contemptuous of the majority,” that the Welsh government is using a “minoritarian elitist argument that is really delegitimizing the majority opinion.”

“The subtext of anti-racist training is that unless you have this training, you will be a racist. That’s a horrible message to be sending out to people you are supposed to represent,” she said.

For children, the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan claimed that “developing negative stereotypes about ethnic minority people can start as early as age four.” It added that “even those who think they are non‑racist can have ingrained stereotypes which may, if combined with a position of power, result in negative behaviour towards ethnic minority people.”

“What could be more intrusive than telling children how different they are? They are going to be told that the most important thing is their skin colour,” said Cuthbert.

She also questioned the “superficial” educational aspect of teaching Asian, black, and minority history, which she claimed would be a “performative tactic.”

“Are they going to be teaching the history of Asia ie of Japan, China, or Uzbekistan? Each of these nations has a distinct history and they just lump it under Asian, similar to black. Have they done any work or thought to the enterprise that is going to be needed for each of these histories? Will it be Ibram X., Kendi, or DiAngelo’s take on Post Colonialism or is it going to be serious work?” said Cuthbert.

Prominent American CRT advocate Ibram X. Kendi says there is no such thing as being non-racist or race-neutral. In other words, one must support “anti-racist” policies and actively identify and confront perceived racism in everyday life in order not to be a racist.

“Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist—there’s no neutrality,” the Boston University professor wrote in his childrens’ book “Antiracist Baby.”

ibram kendi
Ibram X. Kendi is seen in a New York City studio on March 10, 2020. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

Cuthbert said the Welsh government in introducing the plan quoted the Black Panther Party. She said, “they were a political organisation that advocated armed struggle etc. That is exactly the same as Kendi’s idea, and that is replicated everywhere, that unless you are actively anti-racist then you are part of the problem, the idea is the same.”

“What we will be doing to a generation is teaching them to be very cynical and or very painfully self-conscious and that their relationships with each other will be quite fraught,” she said.

Cuthbert said that Britain has become a positive multi-ethnic society, but CRT will take race relationships backward. “If this isn’t stopped we will go backwards, they are going to make skin colour the most important thing, and that’s horrible,” she said.

‘Lazy Narratives’

In an article in January in The Equiano Project, Ben Sears, a former local government policy officer and teacher who lives in South Wales, said that when “governments and policy-makers” see the world in terms of concepts like CRT and white privilege, “we are fed simplistic, lazy narratives about the causes of problems, and in turn, are offered simplistic, lazy solutions.”

“Attempts to deconstruct institutions runs through every level in Wales,” Sears told The Epoch Times.

“What was clear was there wasn’t any challenge to all this. There still isn’t because of the fear factor, for fear of being called a racist,” he added.

He added that long term, he believed that Wales’ anti-racism plans will “backfire spectacularly,” noting that explaining white privilege to some people in the Valleys, which are amongst some of the poorest communities in Europe, is not going to be received well.

“You only have to look at the U.S. for that. You are trying to eradicate something which is as much about human nature as it is about anything. The way it is framed will create more division rather than less, exacerbating the problems that it claims to resolve,” said Sears.

As of publication, the Welsh government has not replied to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Bill Pan and Harry Lee contributed to this report.

From The Epoch Times

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