A person’s “race” or skin colour can never define who anybody is but, sadly, in the world we live in, these are factors which do affect the socio-economic status and the life-chances of us citizens of Birmingham. This is a super diverse city, especially in terms of race, nationality, religion, belief and culture (The 2021 Census is likely to confirm more than half city’s population is of Black, Asian or Minority ethnic origin, as 65% of our school children are already).

As we approach the May local elections, what should the city’s citizens expect from councillors old and new? BRIG, the Birmingham Race Impact Group, suggests that all political parties and election candidates adopt the proposals set out below.

BIRMINGHAM RACE EQUALITY MANIFESTO

Make Birmingham the first Anti-Racist City in the UK. Let’s be proactive in tackling the roots of systemic racism and not just the symptoms.
Adopt a 10 Year Race Equality Delivery Plan for key sectors through annual targets over the next decade.
Conduct a Survey of Racial Attitudes every two years, to respond to any shifts in the City’s racial attitudes and the City’s community cohesion.
Promote the 3-year rolling Boards Diversity Challenge to ensure Birmingham’s Boards and management teams are reflective of the City’s super-diversity.
Establish cross city Race Inequality Metrics to measure race impact and benchmark race inequality indicators to assess progress.
The City’s public agencies should formally adopt a duty requiring them to reduce socio-economic disadvantage through their decision making by adopting Section 1 of the Equalities Act 2010.
Encourage key Birmingham Institutions to publish Annual Ethnicity Pay Gap data.
Persuade more Birmingham Institutions to adopt the Race Equality Code, thus joining the growing number of early adopters in the city who can be audited on their progress.
Acknowledge the historic role by city institutions in the slave-trade, commemorating it like London, Liverpool and Bristol have done.
Support all Birmingham schools with teaching Black, Asian and Marginalised Community Histories. This is already the case in Wales, so why not Birmingham.
Develop and adopt a Schools Race Equality Standard for all city schools to achieve. (This should be added formally to the City Council’s 7-year schools improvement contract with the Birmingham Education Partnership).
Establish a cross sector Race Equality Community Fund to support projects tackling systemic racism and community projects enhancing race equality and community cohesion.
Develop and implement a Birmingham Leadership White Paper to deliver the leadership required for a super diverse city.
Agree a detailed Legacy Delivery Plan and framework for the 2022 Commonwealth Games (beyond simply stating strategic intent) to be shared with the city’s citizens by the Games Organising Committee, its partners and the City Council prior to the Games.
Establish a National Centre for World Cultures which creates a shared space to celebrate Birmingham as a superdiversity city.