Race

The Scottish Government's Equality Evidence Finder cites a figure of 4.6% as being the proportion of the population who identify as Black Minority Ethnic people [BME] as at 2018.

In 2019, Equality Here, Now checked the performance of Councils in Scotland as employers in delivering employment equality for BME people. The conclusion of that research was :

Glasgow Centre for Population Health estimates, in a study from 2017, that Scotland would have, at 2020, an average of over 5% of the population identifying as Black Minority Ethnic [BME] and increasing to 7% by 2031. Local authorities in Scotland are reporting an average across all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities of 1.29% of the workforce identifying as BME.

These basic numbers reveal all too clearly that Scotland’s local authorities are quite some distance from being even close to delivering employment equality, after having had 10 years of opportunity to make the aims of the Equality Act 2010 a reality for people looking to escape discrimination and gain equal access to employment. Given there are no obvious reasons why this should be the case, applying Occam’s razor would suggest the most likely reason for the failure is that there is a marked lack of appetite in local government for changing a status quo in a Scotland which is largely run by and for WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] privilege.

For Scottish government and the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] to be aware of this and not to actively intervene and drive the real change required, suggests WASP privilege is similarly indulged by government and the EHRC.

Equality Here, Now has researched the performance of Councils in Scotland as an employer of BME people over a number of years, and the journey from then until now in terms of race equality at work can be uncovered in the research reports published in 2017, 2015, and 2013.