Tag Archives: BME

Manchester BME Inspiration Day

By Natalie Chindipha | Mon 17th April 2017 - 4:06 pm

Inspiration Days are friendly and informal events, designed to give members, especially new members, the opportunity to develop their skills, learn more about becoming active in the party and meet other like-minded people from across the regions.

This day is specifically for anyone who self identifies as an ethnic minority.

The training will cover:

Advice on getting more involved through different party roles such as becoming a Parliamentary candidate
How the Party is organised and including the rights and responsibilities of members
Identifying and developing confident communication skills
Creating a personal action plan

Posted in News | Also tagged manchester gorton | 2 Comments

BME or BAME LibDems?

By Teena Lashmore | Tue 8th November 2016 - 10:06 am

I presented this question to peers, fellow Liberal Democrats and members of EMLD (Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats), after seeing the launch of our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Manifesto in 2015, and I continue to raise this debate while holding office as London Region Vice Chair – because sometimes an acronym is important.

BAME is the acronym for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, whereas BME is the acronym for Black and Minority Ethnic.

The intellectual argument that ‘Black’ is a socially constructed political identity – a way to challenge the racism in England – became absorbed into ethnic and cultural identity politics. Caribbean people felt their skin was not black but shades of brown. Their post colonial ‘classification’ had evolved through a range of terms that included ‘coloured’, arriving at the destination term ‘Black’ at a similar time as ‘Afro-Americans’, or ‘African Americans’, or ‘Black Americans’. The battle to maintain a dual identity, such as Barbados Brits, was less successful and the internalized dislikes of our Africanness during this time made ‘Black’ the compromise that most people could sign up to: one term – serving two purposes.

‘Ethnic Minority’ is used because white-on-white hating is actually xenophobia, but that could not fit neatly into our Race Relations Act because the Act was for the protection of victims against racism. In order to protect cultural groups like the Irish and Jewish communities from hate, we needed a noun that encapsulated the common experience of all ethnic groups and we arrived at ‘Ethnic Minority’ and with our European countries (Germany), we also arrived at ‘Hate Crime’ to define the offending behaviours.