Patrick Christys held a passionate discussion with his panel after Radio 5 presenter Nihal Arthanayake said working in the BBC’s ‘overwhelmingly white environment’ is affecting his mental health.
Conservative Peer Shaun Bailey commented on Arthanayake’s comment, saying: “He said that going to work with white people gave him mental health problems and and I go back to my point, most people in this country are white. So he’s either campaigning for unemployment or campaigning for apartheid.
“He needs to make his mind up. But the most important thing is a divisive statement is driving a wedge between communities. People of colour have faced racism in this country and we’ve fought it for years. But there’s a point if you keep accusing white people of being racist for absolutely no reason, then they’ll just be racist.”
Amy Nickell-Turner replied: “We don’t want to discourage these type of discussions because surely discussions about diversity and inclusion and how it’s making you feel really important to progress.”
Shaun disagreed: “But we really want to discourage this kind of provocative, useless statement because it’s just driving people into opposing corners. There’s nothing in this that will help us work something out. It’ll just cause a fight.”
