Race Relations 2006
Despite ongoing issues relating to the 2005 London bombings, the threat of terrorism and the impact of new immigrants to the country, people's own experiences of prejudice and discrimination appear relatively unchanged from previous years. Perceptions of integration and attitudes to race relations also remain the same with ethnic minorities continuing the trend of being more positive than white people on most measures.
The qualitative research finds that people feel meaningful social interaction between different ethnic groups would be better at fostering a shared sense of Britishness and good race relations than more formal or compulsory means like citizenship classes or English language lessons. The survey data also supports this notion: people who mix both within the context of work, school and college and in more social situations are among the most positive about diversity and integration. While people who only mix at work, school and college are considerably less so. This highlights that it is not just social interaction which is important, but that the nature of interactions between people from different ethnic groups also plays a role.
Ethnic minorities tend to mix more than white people, although this most likely reflects the fact that as minority groups they have more opportunity to mix with white people than vice versa. There do, however, appear to be some key differences within ethnic minority communities with black people generally reporting that they mix more regularly than Asian people, reflecting trends recorded in the National Citizenship Survey.
Download the topline results pdf, 25KB
Technical Details
1,068 British adults, aged 16+ were interviewed face-to-face in home between 28 September - 3 October 2006. 223 ethnic minority adults from black and Asian ethnic groups aged 16+ were interviewed in-street across England between 15-20 November 2006. Data in both the ethnic minority and general public samples are weighted to the known national profiles. Four discussion groups were conducted across London (2 groups), Birmingham (1 group) and Edinburgh (1 group) between 10-12 October 2006.
