Vision and Mission
1. Vision – the world we want to see
ROTA aims to create a just and equitable Britain, working with communities to eliminate systemic racial injustices.
2. Mission – our role in getting us there
ROTA’s role is to drive for structural change by using evidence and research, working collaboratively with impacted communities and the organisations that support them.
We believe communities impacted by racism, and the organisations which serve them, already know how best we can create anti-racist policies and practices. ROTA works with these groups and uses its lobbying and communications expertise to enable communities to exercise their power, empowering them to wield their influence and drive change.
We abide by the principal of ‘nothing about us without us’.
Our Priorities
ROTA works to challenge racism in all of its forms and in all of the areas it appears. We have identified six priority areas of British life where structural racism has the largest impact. The areas we have identified are:
- Housing
- Health
- Education
- Immigration
- Employment
- Criminal Justice
Homelessness is a growing problem for our entire country, but some communities are more at risk than others.
Our communities are already more likely to live in precarious, poor quality or overcrowded housing and it’s shocking to think that most children who live above the fourth floor of tower blocks in England are black or Asian.
With the horrific recent case of Child Q, how Black children fare in the education system is at the forefront of our minds.
Black children from Caribbean backgrounds are nearly four times more likely to be permanently excluded (expelled) than the school population as a whole and were twice as likely to receive a fixed period exclusion (suspended).
Deciding who we welcome into our country has always been a contentious issue which is rarely out of our headlines.
The Hostile Environment, The Windrush Scandal, people crossing the Channel in small boats, the Nationality and Borders Act, and now the Rwanda plan all highlight the way race plays into our public policy.
After a decade of austerity which has seen inequality grow, the country now looks set for an horrific cost of living crisis which looks set to plunge even more families into poverty. Black African and Bangladeshi households have ten times less wealth than White British people and that was before the pandemic. We are all weathering the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat.
Justice is supposed to be blind and fair but sadly, no matter which part of our Justice system you come across, your outcomes will be worse if you are black our Asian.