Beyond Survival? The BME third sector past and future Asif Afridi brap

 History of the black and minority ethnic third sector. What has shaped its development?  Challenges the sector faces and how these might be overcome?

You have started a new organisation to provide I.T. classes to local people from African countries that have recently arrived in the UK. You’ve received some funding to deliver classes to 200 people in your first year, but the Local Authority (your main funder) has now asked you to attend quarterly meetings to share views about the skills needs of the African community. You are concerned that you don’t have the resources to do this and that you can’t speak on behalf of all African people in your community. What would you do?

Defining Characteristics  Self-help and self-organisation – a preparedness to do for ourselves what British society cannot or will not do for us.  Mutuality – supporting those community members already here and providing for new arrivals.  Political resistance – collective efforts to counter the experience of British racism and discrimination and to build up alternative community provision.

A short history  Eighteenth century onwards  Windrush and the new British working class  Rise of British racism  Respectable racism  Struggles against racist employment  The 1950s/60s – early voluntary sector provision  Rise of racism, oppressive policing and fascist politics  Britain’s black communities explode  Scarman and after

Race Relations ‘thinking’  Influence of multiculturalism…  Funding allocated on the basis of difference  Competition between groups  Offered degree of power and influence for BME communities (via representation)

How policy makers understand the BME voluntary sector Challenging racism vs. ‘ethnic representation’  Challenging racism oChallenging/ protesting/ addressing inequality oDenial of racism and the isolation this brings with it (difficulties forging alliances) oLack of collaboration between BME organisations and between BME and white organisations

How policy makers understand the BME voluntary sector continued…  Ethnic representation oConduits and mediators of BME opinion oBuffer between state and black communities oState ‘patronage’ of the BME third sector oBuys society ‘immunity’ to charges of racism oEngagement closely follows periods of crisis oRise in representative networks

Implications of this?  BME organisations are special because of their ‘BME-ness’, but are limited by this too  Enforced straight-jacket, a kind of ‘ghettoisation’, a recognition of their ethnicity but at the expense of their excellence  Are we reaping what we’ve inadvertently helped to sow?

Current Challenges  Grants vs. Contracts oDisproportionate impact on the BME sector  Infrastructure Support oInequality in support – little known about the sector, and barriers to improving equity of support  Cohesion, super-diversity, single-identity funding  Discouraging funding on ‘single-identity’ basis  Implications of ‘super-diversity’ – only so many resources to go around?  BME sector: unintentional maintenance of the status quo?

Future of the BME third sector?  BME sector about ‘fix’ and ‘fit’  Fragmentation of the sector  Common experience across the sector? – The use that the state makes of it  Common experience of inequality and relationship to race relations policy also divides the sector

What next?  Improving evidence about the impact and success of BME organisations  Setting our own indicators of success  Making the transition: from children of grant funding to financial and political independence  Realising shared roots