Ethnic minorities in Britain are facing rising and increasingly overt racism, with levels of discrimination and abuse continuing to grow in the wake of the Brexit referendum, nationwide research reveals.
According to polling data seen by the British newspaper The Guardian, 71% of people from ethnic minorities now report having faced racial discrimination, compared with 58% in January 2016, before the EU vote.
The data comes amid rising concern at the use of divisive rhetoric in public before this week’s European parliament elections, where some leading candidates have records of overt racism.
The survey by Opinium suggests racists are feeling increasingly confident in deploying overt abuse or discrimination. The proportion of people from an ethnic minority who said they had been targeted by a stranger rose from 64% in January 2016 to 76% in February this year, when the most recent polling was carried out of 1,006 people weighted to be nationally representative.
The trend appears in line with crime figures, which have shown that racially motivated hate crime has increased every year since 2013, doubling to 71,251 incidents in England and Wales in 2018, according to the Home Office.
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