Hansard

My colleague Neil Findlay has made his point well.

Intercultural Youth Scotland shares helpful dos and don’ts on its Twitter page. It highlights the real danger that engaging in empty gesturing about racism ends up being performative and a quiet way to continue systematic racism. Reflecting on its words and on the words of Anas Sarwar, I say that a hashtag or a picture while taking the knee are not the same as enacting meaningful lasting change. To quote Intercultural Youth Scotland directly, it says:

“Racism is not only valid or worth addressing when there is a worldwide focus on it. It is important that organisations consider their actions continuously, including evaluating their own positions before recent events, actions during it and their plans for when the media focus dies down.

Organisations making token efforts during a time of crisis is not true ally ship. Especially when a lot of these organisations have too frequently stayed silent when these issues have been brought to their attention in private.”

The Equalities and Human Rights Committee has a current inquiry into race inequality that looks specifically at employment. The call for evidence is open until 30 June, and we would very much welcome views and opinions from those with direct experience. Lived experience will best help us to hold to account public authorities, including the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. The real and urgent challenge for us is in taking sustainable and meaningful action at home here in Scotland. That will involve difficult conversations, listening and acting and, in some cases, just being quiet and stepping aside to let the voices that we find so easy to ignore speak their truth.

I will focus my remarks on party-political representation, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Parliament simply has not focused on race and racial inequalities enough and it is clear that we are not diverse.

Secondly, party-political representation is something that each and every one of us in this chamber can change. No hiding and no excuses—we all have a direct influence over our party’s policies and internal workings. We can change things and we can do so before the next election.

I cannot “pass the mic” to a black or minority ethnic sister in this Parliament because there is no one here to pass it to. That is not good enough, but neither is just saying so. Our apologies, sympathies, tears and declarations of solidarity are not enough. There needs to be action and my party is fortunate that we already have an example of what to do to rebalance the overrepresentation of white men and increase representation of an underrepresented group.

Before the most recent Scottish parliamentary election, the SNP acted to increase women’s representation in our party and that action worked. Those mechanisms and that action had to be hard fought for on the conference floor and followed up with meaningful changes to practice. I thank Nicola Sturgeon for her strong leadership in driving forward changes that had previously been deemed too hard or unnecessary because things would eventually balance out. I also express gratitude to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh for her meaningful, supportive and successful work as the women’s officer through the women’s academy, conference and mentoring.

The argument that many of us made at the time—about not being prepared to simply wait to see improvements in women’s representation move at glacial speed—stands here today. With similar mechanisms and structures, we can overcome the structural barriers in the way of BME women—women whose talent we are missing from this chamber.

We must have a Parliament that is more representative of the citizens whom we serve. That is the thing: diversity is not just about fairness to the excluded group; it produces better results, too. I might not be able to “pass the mic” in the chamber, but I can draw colleagues’ attention to the great online list of women of colour experts and commentators in Scotland. As the curator Talat Yaqoob said,

“If you need a speaker or someone for media interviews - use this, if you know someone who should be on it - share it. If you’re a WOC - pls be on it!”