ANAS Sarwar has called for greater diversity in politics as just five BAME people have been elected in Scotland.
Mr Sarwar, who has been an MP and MSP, said part of challenging racism is to ensure a diverse parliament, reflecting all people within the Scottish population.
To date, just five Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people have ever been elected in Scotland to either Westminster or Holyrood, with Mr Sarwar and his father Mohammad Sarwar the only BAME MPs.
Along with Mr Sarwar, the MSPs from ethnic minorities have been Hanzala Malik, current Justice minister Humza Yousaf and the late SNP MSP Bashir Ahmad.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Sturgeon rips into Tories for putting politics before the pandemic
Mr Sarwar said: "In the entire 20 year history of the Scottish Parliament, we have only ever elected four ethnic minority MSPs, and all four have been from Glasgow.
"All four, have been from Pakistani origin. All four have been Muslim all four have been males. We need to attract more elected members - female ethnic minority representation, people from other minority groups for example our Chinese communities, our African community. These are all areas that continue to be underrepresented.
"Four people is not good enough in itself, but we need to have greater representation if we are to truly be a parliament that reflects our wider society."
Mr Sarwar was speaking as the Black Lives Matter movement continues to grow across the UK. At the weekend protesters held peaceful campaigns in Glasgow Green, Holyrood Park in Edinburgh and elsewhere.
In Bristol a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by protesters, which has been widely condemned as a criminal act by politicians, while others say the city council should have dealt with the contentious sculpture long ago.
Mr Sarwar said the idea that racism does not exist, or is not an issue, in Scotland was wrong, explaining: "I've always spoken out against the idea of Scottish exceptionalism...where it seems as if we want to say that Scotland is somehow automatically better because we're Scotland, and bad things don't happen here.
"The reality is there are good and bad people in every country, and Scotland is not immune to racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. We have to look at ourselves and aspire to be better, that doesn't mean we think less of Scotland or we're talking Scotland down. It's about being realistic about what the actual real challenges are here in the country.
"We shouldn't be having a debate about whether racism exists or not, instead of having a debate about what we're going to do about it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel