Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2021 Sep;43(8):1789-1800. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13317. Epub 2021 Jun 19.
This paper is a narrative review of the use of collective terminology in relation to race and health in Britain, with particular reference to the 'Black African' community. 'Black Africans' have been categorised in the 1991-2011 censuses with added free-text in 2021 in response to user demand. However, the UK government is increasingly reporting data for the 'Black' pan-ethnicity, especially in the even more generalised 'BAME' ('Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic') acronym in COVID-19 pandemic reports. The consequences of this practice are addressed. Firstly, with respect to ethical challenges, Black Africans find their conscription by government into the term BAME offensive and do not accept it as a self-descriptor. This labelling, which subsumes Black Africans' self-assigned ethnicity in the census, and consequent misrecognition may be interpreted as a micro-aggression (a term coined in the 1970s but used here to denote microinvalidation), as suggested in the current black activism of the 'Black Lives Matter movement'. Secondly, ONS has warned that concealed heterogeneity renders the pan-ethnicities unreliably crude, making them scientifically inaccurate. Analysts are recommended to present ethnic group data for the full census classification where possible for reasons of validity and respect for the patient as arbiter of their ethnic group.
本文是对英国种族与健康领域中集体术语使用情况的叙述性综述，特别关注“非洲黑人”群体。在 1991 年至 2011 年的人口普查中，“非洲黑人”被归类为这一类别，2021 年为响应用户需求，在该类别中增加了自由文本。然而，英国政府越来越多地报告“黑人”泛族裔的数据，尤其是在更笼统的“BAME”（黑人、亚洲人和少数族裔）首字母缩略词在 COVID-19 大流行报告中。本文探讨了这种做法的后果。首先，就伦理挑战而言，非洲黑人认为政府将他们归入 BAME 的做法具有冒犯性，他们不接受这个术语来描述自己。这种标签将非洲黑人在人口普查中自我认定的族裔归入其中，导致他们的身份被错误识别，可能被解释为一种微观侵犯（该术语于 20 世纪 70 年代创造，但在这里用于表示微观否定），正如当前“黑人的命也是命”运动中的黑人激进主义所表明的那样。其次，英国国家统计局警告称，泛族裔群体隐藏的异质性使得它们不够可靠和粗糙，从而导致其在科学上不准确。为了确保有效性和尊重患者作为其族裔的仲裁者，建议分析人员尽可能根据完整的人口普查分类呈现族裔群体数据。
