“I didn’t see another white face.” 

This was the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick’s major reaction from a 90-minute visit to Handsworth, Birmingham.  “That’s not the kind of country I want to live in”, he continued, claiming a visible lack of integration. The mass of subsequent refutations of his portrayal of the community of Handsworth, and the accusations of racism, are entirely justifiable. Yet they miss the main point. This is the implication that a lack of white faces equals a problem of integration. Yet all the (black, brown, mixed) faces that Jenrick saw in Handsworth are equally British citizens going about their lives. He did not see them as such. Handsworth is admittedly a deprived area; but Jenrick saw them as deprived of white people. They were clearly deficient.  

So why is not seeing a white face a problem? It is clearly Jenrick’s problem, not the residents of Handsworth. He clearly feels uncomfortable. He perceives, based on skin colour, that there is no one like him. He has entered a parallel universe. Instead of seeing people as people, he sees Handsworth residents as aliens. Might there even be a question mark over whether they even hold the dreaded British Values, if they don’t live side by side with white folk? 

“Instead of seeing people as people, he sees Handsworth residents as aliens.“

Jenrick is part of the problem creation and certainly not to be trusted with solutions.  Drawing attention to skin colour is worse than archaic and goes back to apartheid or white supremacy eras. What primeval policies might be dredged up to solve Jenrick’s problem of insufficient whiteness? The mind boggles. School bussing?   Quotas? Forced displacements?  

Jenrick is of course himself conflicted – he wants a fully integrated society “regardless of faith or the colour of your skin” but then draws attention to skin colour.  Worse, he then links the so-called lack of integration to the Manchester terror attack.  This is also Trumpian in its false connections (remember how the plane in Washington crashed because of the employment of those with disabilities as air traffic controllers?)

So, in some ways, it is not worth giving this man house room. Yet attitudes like his are pervasive. The Bishop of Birmingham rightly accused him of feeding into a “harmful narrative that provides fuel for a fire of toxic nationalism”. The author Sathnam Sanghera from nearby Wolverhampton, and from the same school as Jenrick, fears that we have not moved away from the thinking that led to the Windrush scandal.  On the contrary, he fears that in 2025 we have a new cult of ethno-nationalism – imported from the United States but supercharged by bad actors in the social media.  

There is then still much rearguard action to take against such cults, and this is the work that ConnectFutures is engaged in – based in Birmingham, also working nationally and internationally. One key focus now is training with young people and adults on disinformation, hate speech, media literacy, extremism, how narratives are generated and shared, and trying to make young people resilient to the spread of harm. We could almost use this as a case study in our training with young people, for them to dissect what is said, and the deeper ramifications. They could discuss how harmful narratives are spread from a variety of influential people and then practise generating counter views.

“We could almost use this as a case study in our training with young people, for them to dissect what is said, and the deeper ramifications.”

But there is a long way to go. Idiocy and bigotry does have its merits sometimes, to fire up resistance. That there is pushback and dismay from Jenrick’s deranged comments is actually quite good.  The people of Handsworth and beyond have united to condemn his words and his stance such as a recent poster campaign  “Brummies united against racism and hate crime.”  


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This workshop is tailored and intended to support you to confidently recognise symbols, language and propaganda of extreme misogyny and incel ideology. It will also provide a greater understanding of online and gaming spaces and how they influence this type of thinking. Participants will leave with greater confidence in practical response options.

At ConnectFutures, we create and deliver practically minded workshops that seek to develop a sense of citizenship, respect, and intolerance to hate that extends across on/offline worlds.

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