Skip to content 
Search

Latest Stories

Asian trust issues ‘much wider than just vaccine’

Dr Raj Persaud

ASIANS are more likely to die from Covid-19 compared with other ethnic groups, yet accord­ing to the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), only 57 per cent of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are pres­ently likely to accept a vaccine.


Compared to 79 per cent of white respondents; confidence was lowest in Asians, with 55 per cent likely to agree to take the jab, RSPH data showed.

Ethnic minorities also distrusted previous vac­cines – the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine and the flu jab had much lower take-up among ethnic minorities. Influenza vaccination rates across the whole of Asia are low, compared to the west.

The media speculation as to why there is such widespread ‘vaccine hesitancy’ in Asians, seems to centre on a supposed tendency for those from eth­nic minority backgrounds to favour more alterna­tive or herbal remedies, from their traditional back­grounds, and so reject western medicine.

But the vaccine scepticism of Asians is also be a symptom of a deeper more fundamental mindset difference about trust in general. Ethnic minorities have been shown again and again in various scien­tific studies of western societies to have much less confidence in others, including institutions and other people, significantly less than the majority ethnic group, or white people.

Asians don’t just trust vaccines less; they have less trust in practically everything.

Trust is about the belief that you can count on others, particularly in predicaments where betrayal is possible. The rise of CCTV coverage, for example, means we increasingly rely on the chances of being caught on camera persuading our community to behave, as opposed to believing them to do the right thing even if they could shaft us.

Studies keep finding that trust is in inexorable decline in western societies over time, averaging a decline of 0.5 percentage points annually, which means that over 50 years, trust in each other has dropped by a quarter.

Sandra Susan Smith, a professor of criminal jus­tice, at Harvard University, recently showed in her research that the three most powerful determi­nants of trust are education level: the more edu­cated tend to trust more; age: older people tend to trust more; and race. Of all of these, race is the most powerful of all in determining how much you trust others as explained in her study entitled Race and Trust and published in the Annual Review of Sociol­ogy. Ethnic minorities trust less.

Just how powerful race is in explaining trust lev­els is the finding that in the US, trust among the wealthiest black people was similar to levels of trust expressed by the poorest whites.

Ethnic minorities are believed to trust so little in comparison with whites because of the bruising and repeated experience of discrimination. This makes it difficult for them to have faith in others, but they do tend to trust members of their commu­nity more.

This tendency to be somewhat mistrusting may have been transformed into a secret strength in the community. Asian children outperformed other ethnic groups educationally because their parents pushed them with the threat that to get a job in a prejudiced society, they would have to be signifi­cantly better than the competition.

Asians also often choose to be entrepreneurs and run their own businesses rather than work for others, as they placed little confidence in working their way up through office politics. There wasn’t going to be fair treatment or promotion from man­agers not of their ethnicity.

Now, however, the problem is that this lack of trust may be coming back to haunt the Asian com­munity – if widespread distrust of the vaccine leads to poor take up and therefore continued higher mortality rates.

The inherent problem of being suspicious of the outside world and as a result remaining insular and self-contained, is that it deprives you of learning opportunities to figure out who and when to trust. If you only ever work for yourself or go for job inter­views with far and away the best qualifications, you never find out if you could have trusted the outside world, so mistrust becomes a self-fulfilling proph­ecy which never gets dispelled.

So, for instance, if you never lend anyone money, because you just assume no one is ever going to pay you back as you don’t trust anyone, then you never learn who you can lend to, and who you can’t.

Trusting is a journey in which from time to time you will get burnt, but as a result you’ll learn more about how to navigate the murky waters of trust. It is only by dipping your toe in the choppy waters of intimate relationships, for example, you learn who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

This is possibly why older people trust more – it’s just that they have learned through hard experi­ence under what conditions to trust reliably. If you never believe in anyone, you never grasp who to trust. Then you remain within a very insular cir­cumscribed world as a result. Many Asians, despite having made the UK their home, remain surpris­ingly cut off from it, because of this deep tendency to be suspicious of outsiders.

If mistrust means you never take the first step into the unknown then how to break this cycle?

The company which pioneered the Pfizer vac­cine, BioNTech, has as its CEO, Dr Ugur Sahin, who was born in Turkey and immigrated to Germany, where he is professor of experimental oncology, and now one of the country’s top 100 wealthiest people, worth more than $5 billion. His wife, Ozlem Tureci, co-founder and chief medical officer of Bi­oNTech, was born in Germany, but from Turkish parents. This tendency to marry others from the same ethnic background in first generation immi­grants may have something to do with mistrust of the host community.

As an Asian if you don’t trust much, you may at least believe in the excellence and hard work that could lie behind these two exemplars of immigrant success. You just took part in an informal psychology experiment – so now that you know the origin of this vaccine has something to do with immigrants, has that changed how much you trust the jab?

Dr Raj Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist and Emeritus visiting Gresham professor for public un­derstanding of psychiatry.

More For You

Fauja Singh

Fauja Singh

Getty Images

What Fauja Singh taught me

I met Fauja Singh twice, once when we hiked Snowdon and I was in awe he was wearing shoes, not trainers and walking like a pro, no fear, just smiling away. I was struggling to do the hike with trainers. I remember my mum saying “what an inspiration”. He was a very humble and kind human being. The second time I met him was when I was at an event, and again, he just had such a radiant energy about him. He’s one of a kind and I’m blessed to have met him.

He wasn’t just a runner. He was a symbol. A living contradiction to everything we’re taught about age, limits, and when to stop dreaming. And now that he’s gone, it feels like a light has gone out—not just in Punjab or east London, but in the hearts of everyone who saw a bit of themselves in his journey.

Keep ReadingShow less
“Why can’t I just run?”: A south Asian woman’s harrowing harassment story

Minreet with her mother

“Why can’t I just run?”: A south Asian woman’s harrowing harassment story

I was five years old when my parents first signed me up for a mini marathon. They were both keen runners and wanted me to follow in their footsteps. At the time, I hated it. Running felt like punishment — exhausting, uncomfortable, and something I never imagined I’d do by choice.

But one moment changed everything. I was 12, attending a gymnastics competition, and had gone to the car alone to grab my hula hoop. As I walked back, a group of men started shouting at me. They moved closer. I didn’t wait to hear what they had to say — I ran. Fast. My heart was pounding. It was the first time I felt afraid simply for existing in public as a young girl. I never told anyone. But I remember feeling thankful, strangely, that my parents had taught me how to run.

Keep ReadingShow less
Sri Aurobindo

Heehs’s biography is grounded in extensive archival research across France, England, India and Israel

AMG

Sri Aurobindo and the rise of the Asian century

Dinesh Sharma

My friend and colleague, the American historian Peter Heehs, who has lived in Pondicherry, India, for decades, recently published a compelling new biography, The Mother: A Life of Sri Aurobindo’s Collaborator (2025). Heehs previously authored The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (2008), which remains one of the most balanced and scholarly accounts of Aurobindo’s life.

According to Heehs, most previous biographies of the Mother were written for devotees and relied on secondary sources, often presenting her as a divine incarnation without critical engagement. “Such biographies are fine for those who see the Mother as a divine being,” Heehs said, “but they can be off-putting for readers who simply want to understand her life – as an artist, writer, spiritual teacher, and founder of the Ashram and Auroville.”

Keep ReadingShow less
INSET Hatul Shah Sigma conference chair

Hatul Shah

Showing up with purpose: Lessons in leadership and legacy

Hatul Shah

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking at the Circles of Connections event hosted by the Society of Jainism and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. The event was organised by Yash Shah and Hrutika S., and generously sponsored by Koolesh Shah and the London Town Group, with support from Nikhil Shah, Priyanka Mehta, and Ambika Mehta.

The experience reminded me that leadership isn’t just about vision or results — it’s about how you show up, and why you do what you do.

Keep ReadingShow less
Aspirations ignited following Leicester schools Parliament visit

Aspirations ignited following Leicester schools Parliament visit

Dr Nik Kotecha OBE DL

Delighted to pause and look back on a pioneering partnership project, which saw our Randal Charitable Foundation, Leicestershire Police and the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) support pupils, from 5 Leicester schools, tour London and the Houses of Parliament with the aim to help raise aspirations and demonstrate possible future career paths.

With more young people than ever struggling to stay in education, find employment and track down career opportunities, I’ve reflected on the importance of collaborations like this one, which model just one way in that small interventions could reap rewards in the life course of youngsters.

Keep ReadingShow less