It is October 2023 and the richest man in the world has just called the first minister of Scotland a “blatant racist” and, frankly, nobody is surprised. Elon Musk’s stewardship of the social media application Twitter/X has been a bewildering exercise in brand-value destruction in which Musk’s own reputation has plummeted in lockstep with that of a business he appears determined to ruin.
On Friday, Musk responded to a snippet of a speech Yousaf made in 2020 noting — indeed deploring — the reality that almost every senior post held by anyone in Scotland was held by a white person. This has become an infamous speech in racist circles, frequently deployed to make the spurious case that Yousaf hates, or is otherwise prejudiced against, white people. This is a view now apparently endorsed by Musk and that says much more about him — very little of it good — than it does Yousaf.
For context, this was the summer of 2020 when the world went a little potty. The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by white police officers in Minneapolis might have become a planet-wide sensation in any year but it was helped in becoming so by the already febrile nature of the world in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
During a Holyrood debate on matters racial in this post-Floyd environment, Yousaf suggested that people were often surprised when he noted that “at 99 per cent of the meetings that I go to, I am the only non-white person in the room”. This, he said, “is not good enough”. Taking the judiciary alone, he noted: “The lord president? White. The lord justice clerk? White. Every High Court judge? White. The lord advocate? White. The solicitor-general? White.” And so on and so on. This was, as Yousaf acknowledged, a statement of the obvious even if it was also one that might have benefited from more careful, or delicate, presentation.
Anas Sarwar made much the same argument in that debate, lamenting the lack of diversity evident in senior echelons of Scottish society. “Is it because we don’t have the talent?” he asked, “or is it because the opportunity doesn’t exist, or, worse yet, is it because people don’t think they’re wanted, or they’re not welcome?”. The answer to his first question is “no”; to the second, “sometimes, probably”.
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But those are only partial answers, stripped from the context in which these questions should be put. For the bigger, more persuasive, answer is that there are few black or brown people in senior positions in Scotland because there are very few black or brown people in Scotland at all.
Census data makes this extraordinarily clear. In 2001, 98 per cent of the Scottish population was white. In 2011, 96 per cent of people living here were white. We do not yet have figures for the most recent census but it is reasonable to assume that Scotland’s ethnic minority population will have increased again while still being a very small portion of the overall population.
It is neither shocking nor disgraceful that almost every senior public figure or corporate chief executive in Scotland is white. A moment’s reflection is sufficient to demonstrate why this is so unsurprising. Consider the judiciary: there are 36 senators of the College of Justice and, yes, all of them are white. Some were born in the 1950s and called to the bar more than 40 years ago and even the youngest were born in the early 1970s. The pool of people qualified to be judges is small to begin with and today’s judges are a reflection of yesterday’s Scotland, which was, allowing for rounding errors, essentially 100 per cent white.
What is true of the judiciary is true of every other profession in which people typically only reach senior management or governing positions in their fifties or sixties. Time in the game matters and 30 years ago there were almost no black or brown people starting in the game. That being so, it is hardly astonishing that there are very few such people in leadership positions now.
It would be a surprise if this remains the case, though the process of change will continue to be slow as Pakistani or Nigerian Scots work their way up career ladders. But it is surely going to happen. Indeed, in areas or jobs that skew younger — broadcasting, popular culture, sport, and even, these days, politics — that change is already apparent. The visibility of ethnic minority Scots — and the opportunities available to them — has never been greater.
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Only a fool would suggest there are no barriers to advancement or that racial prejudice, whether deliberate or unwitting, does not have an impact on individuals seeking opportunity or promotion. Of course it does, even if the application of that prejudice is often subtle and hard to measure precisely. It may be captured in a momentary look or a mild hesitation; the faintest intimation that something, or someone, unusual is present that, all too frequently, may be accompanied by a suggestive whiff of not-quite-belonging.
There is a difference, though, between acknowledging all this and insisting that every institution in Scotland is inherently, self-evidently, guilty of “structural racism” on the basis its leadership is insufficiently diverse when as a practical matter it would be hard for it to be any other way. This is so even when we may also acknowledge that, especially in sensitive areas such as policing, the journey to a race-blind society is some distance from completion.
Both Yousaf and Sarwar have experienced appalling amounts of race-based abuse. Yousaf, who whatever his political misadventures is a decent and well-intentioned fellow, is routinely subjected to the rankest kinds of social media bigotry. This is shameful even if it is also chiefly a confirmation of something we already know: there are plenty of dreadful people walking among us.
Yet we may acknowledge this while also noting a still greater reality. The SNP and the Scottish Labour party are each led by Glaswegian Pakistani-Scots and this is something simultaneously remarkable and scarcely requiring further comment. That superfluity is its own story and a hopeful one too.
Still, in the question of Musk vs Yousaf there is neither need nor space for equivocation. The first minister has been traduced by the world’s wealthiest man and those Scots who customarily disagree with Yousaf are obliged in special measure to acknowledge this grisly truth.
