More ethnic minority Britons prefer the term “ethnic minorities”, and also “BAME”
With the term “BAME” – black, Asian and minority ethnic – falling out of favour in recent years as a way of describing Britain’s ethnic minority population, one alternative some campaigners are seeking to popularise is “global majority”.
The term was reportedly conceived by academic Rosemary Campbell-Stephens as far back as 2003, but has been adopted in recent years by organisations such as the Church of England, Westminster Council, and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations.
However, a new YouGov study of ethnic minority Britons finds that only a third (34%) say they have ever heard of the term “global majority”, with 51% saying they have not and 16% unsure.
Among those who have heard of global majority, only 21% say they have ever used the term, amounting to just 7% of the entire ethnic minority population in the UK having done so.
Overall, only 27% of ethnic minority Britons say that “global majority” is an acceptable term to use for the portion of the British public that is not white – significantly lower than the proportion who are ok with the terms “ethnic minorities” (66%), BAME (49%) or the American term “people of colour” 42%. Nearly as many consider the global majority term unacceptable (23%), with 50% unsure for now – hardly surprising when most had not come across the phrase before taking this survey.
In terms of their own personal preference, just 9% say “global majority” would be the term they most prefer to use. This is far behind the 35% who say “ethnic minorities”, with a further 16% preferring “BAME” and 21% saying they have no preference – and on a par with the 9% who prefer “people of colour”.
How similar do Britain’s ethnic minority groups consider their experiences to be?
The main reason for the shift away from the term BAME has been criticism that it is a crude catch-all term that treats the UK’s ethnic minority groups as though they are one collective cultural entity, obscuring the fact that the groups are distinct in significant ways.
And indeed, our survey shows that Black Britons and South Asians – who represent the majority of Britain’s ethnic minority population – tend not to see their experience of being an ethnic minority person in the UK as being similar.
For instance, only 28-30% of Black Britons of African or Caribbean heritage feel their experience is similar to that of British people of Indian or Pakistani heritage. Likewise, fewer than three in ten Britons of Indian or Pakistani heritage see their experiences as similar to those of Black Britons of African or Caribbean heritage (22-28%).
It is worth noting, however, that people from the two main South Asian groups – British Indians and Pakistanis – do tend to see their experiences as similar. The same is true of the two main Black British groups, with most of those of African heritage seeing their experience as similar to those of Caribbean heritage, and vice versa.
Separately, the survey shows that ethnic minority Britons do generally see their experience of daily life in general in Britain as being similar to that of other ethnic minority groups – but different to white Britons.
Across all ethnic minority Britons, 53% believe their experience of daily life in Britain is similar to those from other ethnic minority groups, ranging from 44% among Black Britons to 62% among British Pakistanis / Bangladeshis.
By contrast, only 37% of all ethnic minority Britons say they believe their experiences of daily life are similar to those of white Britons, although there is notably more variation between groups.
Britons of mixed ethnicity are the most likely to believe their experiences are similar, at 59% - which reflects the fact that most of this group have one white parent - while Indian Britons are split 46%-46% on whether their lives are like those of white people, but only a small minority of Black Britons (25%) and those of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage (26%) agree.
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Photo: Getty
