The evidence of the Guardian survey on continuing discrimination (Racism in Britain: the stark truth uncovered, 3 December) is sobering but not surprising. It is disappointing that, 25 years on, the same pattern of disadvantage, which was exposed by systematic research by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and other bodies, continues to challenge any complacency that racism is a thing of the past. Of course there has been encouraging progress from those days when I was rebuked by sections of the press for describing Britain as a multiracial society and the sneer of “political correctness” was first heard. We now have a black member of our royal family and both a home secretary and his shadow and a mayor of London from minority ethnic communities. Many of our national sporting teams are truly diverse and more successful for that.

We were too inclined to believe that we had finally moved on. Bodies such as the CRE, with its national responsibility to both campaign for racial equality and enforce the law, had its funding severely reduced as it became absorbed into a more general Human Rights Commission and lost its cutting edge. Community relations councils and units within local authorities fell away and large organisations became less committed to monitoring their performance. So there was a failure to recognise that eternal vigilance is required to maintain progress in this area of national life and we now witness a disturbing resurgence of far-right oppressive rhetoric and policy in many parts of Europe and beyond.

There is little doubt that xenophobia and alarm over immigration played some part in the Brexit decision and, as well as the more subtle patterns of discrimination in many areas revealed by your survey, there are still too many ugly incidents of racial attacks on the vulnerable. In the turbulent years that may lie ahead we need to invest in resources and find the political will to tackle the sources of discrimination that lead to a divisive society.

Michael Day

Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, 1988-93

• Working for the Churches Commission for Racial Justice from 1987 to 1998, it became clear that racism is deeply rooted in British society both individually and institutionally. The latter emerged most visibly through the Stephen Lawrence campaign, which our commission supported, and was then rightly named by the inquiry. At individual level, those of us who are white who claim “I’m not racist” immediately give ourselves away. Racism is in the cultural air we breathe. The best we can say, taking our cue from Alcoholics Anonymous, is: “I am a recovering racist, and I am working on it.” Try saying it out loud, in front of a partner or friend. Then we need one area of institutional racism we can get to work on.

Rev David Haslam

Evesham, Worcestershire

• Your damning reports made for painful reading, particularly, I felt, the depressing experiences of Nish Kumar. However, in one way they seemed unreal. The clear implication was that only white people made careless and demeaning presumptions about their ethnic minority fellow-citizens. This is not totally the case. Some such presumptions are made by one or more ethnic minority groups about others. Although the greatest amount of casually, even unconsciously, insulting behaviour is indeed made by white people, it is wrong and misleading to imply that all ethnic minority groups have so strong a knowledge of each other that they play no part in it.

Josh Webster

London

• What I find disappointing is that we do not speak of or report on racism that exists in the ethnic minority communities against the “whites and blacks”. Many Asian families practise a policy of no BMWs (blacks, Muslims or whites). Carry out research on how many black people are employed by Asian shops, or if a Muslim is offered a job in a shop run by a Hindu. It is time we Asians are made aware of racism within our communities and are called to change our attitudes towards the “other”.

Jehangir Sarosh

Bushey, Hertfordshire

• Racism doesn’t lie in drawing attention to the ethnicity of those convicted of sexual offences against young women in the north of England (Javid says tweet about Asian grooming gangs was appropriate, 4 December). It is a fact that most if not all of them were of Asian heritage, just as it is a fact that a disproportionate number of those who kill fellow teenagers on our urban streets are black. The racism instead lies in selecting that one particular variable ahead of all the other variables which apply in these cases.

For example, the perpetrators are invariably male and they are almost certainly under-educated, they may be excessive users of alcohol or street drugs, many will be unemployed, many may be consumers of violent or pornographic videos, few will have solid, supportive family networks, few will take part in organised sport or positive cultural activities (other than music, perhaps), and so on. If we ignore the superficial, visible characteristics of colour or race, about which no one can do anything anyway, achievable solutions or approaches come into view.

The casual, gratuitous violence of these grotesque offences comes about because there are small groups among us who have not been socialised into agreed, modern modes of behaving and relating. The lesson in understanding them in this way is that individual family members, schools, churches and all the other pillars of civil society must recognise the common duty to include, protect and guide boys and young men throughout their formative years. The guilt of such offenders is theirs, the failure is ours.

Jeremy Walker

London

• I was born in 1934 in Trinidad. My mother was Dutch by birth, but married to my father who was English. When I was three my mother, brother and I were moved to England. I was very frightened of all the white faces I saw when our ship arrived in Southampton.

Selma Montford

Brighton

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