BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic): the ‘new normal in collective terminology

BAME (BLACK, ASIAN AND MINORITY ETHNIC): THE ‘NEW NORMAL’ IN COLLECTIVE TERMINOLOGY

Anyone who has been tracking the public health literature on the greater risks experienced by minority ethnic groups in the coronavirus pandemic will have been struck by the almost ubiquitous use of the acronym ‘BAME’. Government public health agencies use BAME as a modifying adjective for ‘… communities’, ‘… groups’, ‘… households’, ‘… people’, ‘… populations’, ‘… staff’ and as a noun. A 2020 report by Public Health England¹ on the impact of COVID-19 on minority ethnic groups mentioned BAME 217 times without defining the term other than spelling out the acronym. Such usage is redolent of Ian Hacking’s ‘kinds of person’,² a social group brought into being by the creation of labels for them and whose life narratives are dependent on social practices associated with such labelling.

While ‘BME’ (black and minority ethnic) entered…

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