Key steps in the development of this Action Plan

Over the last five years, the Welsh Government has faced the significant challenges of austerity, Brexit, the climate emergency and the Coronavirus pandemic.

In 2020, work started on a new action plan for race equality, called for by grassroots organisations represented on the Wales Race Forum and others who support us in this work. But in March 2020, the work was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, in May 2020, the killing of George Floyd sent shock waves through the global community. In different ways, both of these events have shone a light on the systemic and institutional racism faced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities (herewith called ethnic minority people / groups), both in Wales and elsewhere. The differential impact of COVID-19 Over the past year, a plethora of reports, inquires and research, statistical data and documented experiences of individuals and communities, have all been making clear the disproportionate impact of the current pandemic on people from ethnic minority communities. The Socio-economic subgroup’s report in particular1 , highlighted these impacts and is significant precursor to many of the actions in the plan.

This is underscored by social and structural differences, which lead not just to health disparities, but to other inequalities also. The Welsh Government Chief Medical Officer’s recent report2 summarises these key health and wellbeing challenges for ethnic minority groups. This is not just about the pandemic but about fundamental disparities in our society.

The Runnymede Trust gives testament to such disparities, stating that “racial inequalities persist in almost every arena of British society, from birth to death”3 . The impact of COVID-19 continues, for as this consultation is being written we are still in lockdown although restrictions are being cautiously eased. The First Minister has stressed that when Wales does move into the recovery phase we need to recover well, but also to recover more fairly.

5. Background

1 www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2020-06/first-ministers-bame-COVID-19-advisory-group-report-of-the-socioeconomic-subgroup.pdf 2 www.gov.wales/chief-medical-officer-waless-special-edition-annual-report-2019-2020-protecting-our-health 3 Runnymede perspective (2020); https://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/ImmigrationAndTheLotteryOfBelongingFINALJuly2020.pdf George Floyd / ‘Black Lives Matter’ This evidence has supported the growing calls for action, but the killing of George Floyd, the black lives lost in Wales, miscarriages of justice and the work of rights-based organisations in Wales, have also increased the calls for change. Cindy Ikie, National Campaign Manager for Black Lives Matter Wales has articulated this powerfully: “We were sold a lie, long ago, that there is justification for the ill treatment of a people because of their pigmentation of skin. We have been operating in a system that encourages us to hoard opportunities and resources, and to maintain the deficit of these things for Black people, so that those who are not Black can live their lives more freely, and at the expense of others. We live in a global society that has dirtied its hands in this heinous practice but was rudely awakened to the truth of its ugliness. Forced to gaze now at its reflection – and find that it is not the fairest of them all. A global society that continually ignored the labour pains and cries of Black people until one Black man, by the name of George Floyd, in the middle of a global pandemic, had the knee of a white man, bear the fullness of that white man’s weight, pressed down upon his neck, crushing down on the uppermost parts of his spinal cord”.