‘The end of BAME’? Neoliberal post-multiculturalism, racism denial and the state

‘BAME’ has been used in the UK since the 1990s to denote ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ people. The combination of varied ethnic groups within BAME as a single collective category has proven controversial. This article focuses on the UK state critique of BAME and governmental decision to disuse the acronym announced in 2022. Methodologically, the article uses purposive sampling of key governmental, public sector and civil society sources. These texts are analysed using a processural racial eliminativist interpretive theoretical approach. To start, the neoliberal ‘post-multicultural’ conjuncture from the early 2000s onwards is explicated as the context for the emergent state critique of BAME. Next, the article details criticism of BAME in the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report (2021) and the government’s response, Inclusive Britain (HM Government, 2022), announcing disuse of the acronym. This overview critically establishes the basis for a four-part analysis: evaluating claims that BAME militates against meritocracy and minority ethnic social mobility; examining arguments against BAME as pathologizing some minority ethnic group characteristics and advocating attention to intra-ethnic differences; engaging emergent disparity discourse as displacing discussions of discrimination and ethnic inequality; and assessing claims that racism has diminished significantly in relation to critical insights on racism denial. To conclude, the article argues for retaining a collective minority ethnic category as an administrative and analytical tool to aggregate instances of discrimination, substantiate the existence of racism and inform antiracist practice.