Scotland’s political establishment is failing to address racism because it is blind to the problems faced by ethnic minorities, experts have warned.

A panel of academics, cultural and community leaders said that black and ethnic minority communities remained marginalised.

“We are not as progressive as we like to think because we haven’t faced up to our own past and the different experiences that are in the country, particularly in the minorities,” Duncan Morrow, the author of a Scottish government report on hate crime, said.

“If Scotland is to be the progressive place it says it is, it has to face the reality of the history of ethnic minorities and be alive to its imperial past. It is complex and difficult set of issues.”

Professor Morrow