Arts organisations call for more inclusive language - with #BAMEOVER
Inc Arts are leading the latest campaign - calling for businesses to scrap the outdated and divisive term
There are renewed calls for an end to the outdated and reductive term "BAME" in discussions around race and ethnicity.
Just yesterday, UK music, who represent the music industry demanded the phrase be scrapped as well.
The latest calls for the phrase to be dropped are being led by Arts Inc, who are campaigning to diversify the arts and cultural sectors.
They've launched the #BAMEOVER campaign, to try and explain to people why the term is problematic.
Amanda Parker is leading them:
"There's no country called BAME, nobody's from Bameland, it rhymes with blame, I'm not the bane of your life, and it makes me cringe.
"We; people who are ethnically diverse, people who've experienced racism, people from African diaspora heritage and people from Asian diasporas, are really fed up with being lumped together in a useless, inflexible and kind of 'othering', weird phrase."
The Statement suggests; IF it's necessary - it's more inclusive to just ask someone how they identify - instead of dividing people into "White" or "Other".
Amanda explains, it can be hard - but it's very important;
"It is difficult to talk about it usefully in such a massive term, the picture within it is so useless as to mean the phrase is just othering - all it says is 'White perspective - white person speaking'".
Another issue, Amanda tells us, is how the phrase doesn't take into account the huge differences in experience and advantage between people of different ethnic origins;
For example "When you're talking about educational attainment, that picture is very, very, very different for people who are African heritage specifically,
"Very different from the third generation Bangladeshi community - but they are lumped together in the same term."
You can find out more about #BAMEOVER and the work of Inc Arts, including their new anti-racism conference "Speak-Listen-Reset-Heal" here.