Comparisons Between UK and US
In an article published in 2003, Phillips stated "from Rome, through Constantinople to Venice and London, our (European) nations have a history of peacefully absorbing huge, diverse movements of people, driven by war, famine and persecution; and there is no history of long-term ethnic segregation of the kind one can see in any US city."
In a March 2008 article for Prospect magazine, Phillips was cool on Barack Obama as a potential Presidential candidate, and speculated that if he did become President of America it might "postpone the arrival of a post-racial America".
Following Obama's win, in a radio interview for BBC Radio 4 on November 8, 2008, Trevor Phillips said that he believed it would be impossible for a black candidate in the United Kingdom to rise to the top in politics because of institutional racism within the Labour Party. He said;
If Barack Obama had lived here I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power within the Labour party.
The comments gained support and criticism from members of ethnic communities in the UK. An article on Phillips in The Independent pointed out the demographic differences between the United Kingdom and the United States of America making a comparison untenable. In the United States people of non-European ancestry constitute about one third of the population, whereas in the United Kingdom people of non-white ancestry make up only 8% of the population.
Read more about this topic: Trevor Phillips
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