What’s in an Acronym?
Have you noticed how in the NHS our talk is peppered with acronyms? I would imagine it’s the same in all other industries. Being an NHS veteran, understanding the meaning of what is said is never a problem. I understand most of the acronyms and those that I don’t I can easily work out from the context of the conversation. We talk about the CQC, PHE, HEE, NHSI etc. There are acronyms for every area we work in SCBU, ITU, HDU, CCU, A&E, and in the community, HV, DN, CPT, SpAds. There are acronyms for diagnostics, CAT scan, MRI, BP ECG. In the NHS there are hundreds if not thousands of acronyms and depending on the area you are working in you get to know what they mean when people use them, it’s kind of an ‘in club code’. The NHS confederation even has an NHS acronym buster on their website in case you are too embarrassed to ask what AQuA means or what is a CQUIN, you can look it up on Google.
A couple of weeks ago a very senior leader asked me if I’d read an article in the Times by Matthew Parris a white journalist entitled ‘BME is racist and misleading. Let’s drop it’ I had to admit that I hadn’t read it; he kindly gave me a copy and asked me to read it and tell him what I thought. In short, the journalist took issue with the acronym BME because he found it, in his words, lazy. That’s a charge that can be made to all other acronyms but this particular one caught the journalists’ attention. He said that he hated the term. For the first time, it actually made me really think about the acronym BME and whether as a black woman I found it offensive.
On Friday 22nd May 2015, a similar article appeared in the guardian entitled ‘Is it time to ditch the term ‘black, Asian and minority ethnic’ (BAME)? this article was referring to a speech given by ex-chairman of the Commission for Race Equality (CRE) Trevor Philips stating that phrases such as black and minority ethnic (BME) and black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) have become outdated, existing purely “to tidy away the messy jumble of real human beings who share only one characteristic – that they don’t have white skin”. He said the acronyms could be divisive, and actually served to mask the disadvantages suffered by specific ethnic and cultural groups. The article then asked four people of colour (POC) what they thought about the acronym and they all said they didn’t like it.
This made me think about whether I was out of step with modern thinking on the acronym BME and maybe should start using something else to describe people that are not white British.
Working on the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) we use the term BME a lot and I wonder if we should if it’s not considered PC these days or worse than that, if people find it offensive. If we agree that all acronyms are an easy or as Mathew Parrish put it, lazy way to say something that would otherwise be longwinded and sometimes difficult to describe, then perhaps we shouldn’t use acronyms at all. Perplexed and bothered that there have been two articles in reputable newspapers deriding the acronym, I did a mini survey of friends and family, interestingly no one was particularly bent out of shape by the term, however some people did question the minority ethnic part of the acronym and wondered what exactly did it mean, did it mean white other, it wasn’t clear if it meant all POC or people that were not white British. In the WRES technical guidance the section on collecting the WRES data states that, “The definitions of “Black and Minority Ethnic” and “White” have followed the national reporting requirements of Ethnic Category in the NHS Data Model and Dictionary, and are as used in Health and Social Care Information Centre data”.
“White” staff includes White British, Irish and Any Other White “Black and Minority Ethnic” staff category includes all other staff.
In writing this article it became clear to me that we use the acronym because it is easier than saying, black people and then breaking that down to African Caribbean people, African people, African American people and so on or and of course Asian people, from India, Pakistan or Goa etc. The term ‘BME’ only has the function of describing a set of people based on one shared aspect. In this context we are simply grouping together those who are subject to certain forms of discrimination because they are not ‘white’. Its usage is not akin to expressing the belief that all BME people are exactly the same. No singular term could possibly account for every aspect of everybody’s experience and culture. Nor is it always necessary to account for every individual’s differences when addressing the issue of their unequal and unfair treatment. In this instance discrimination is the problem, not the people being discriminated against.
A colleague that read the blog in draft actually touched on an important and relevant point, he said, ‘I get quite annoyed when critics attack such terminology for being ‘reductive’. It’s the laziest form of criticism, and if we were to cede to its logic we wouldn’t be able to talk or think about certain forms of racism at all’. – Johann Piper
I believe that as the article by Matthew Parris says each group is different, with different needs, aspirations, culture etc. I agree that the needs of each group should be considered and services should be designed and developed to meet the needs of individuals from each group, however, with the work we are doing on the WRES I believe the acronym is valid. Matthew Parrish and Trevor Philips aside, it doesn’t appear to offend too many people, most people understand what it means and in the absence of anything else to describe groups of people that are not white British, it works.
I have to own that I have not given this issue very much thought, having now done so, I believe its permissible for people in the NHS, DH, CQC, CCG, PHE, NHSI and all the other parts of the service to use the term BME.