The Justice Secretary said yesterday there had to be a renewed effort to tackle racist incidents, after the latest annual figures recorded by the police showed little change.
Kenny MacAskill said of the 1% drop in recorded incidents: "Overall crime in Scotland is at a 25-year low. These latest figures show a small reduction in the number of racist incidents in Scotland.
"Although any decrease is to be welcomed, this shows that we need to step up the work going on to transform attitudes and change behaviour."
The minister added: "We need to be ever vigilant and ensure that all our communities are protected. In the year of homecoming we need to remember we are all Jock Tamson's bairns - we're all equal, wherever we went to and wherever we have come from. The law will protect everyone irrespective of class, creed or colour."
There were 5243 racist incidents recorded in 2007-08, compared to the 5321 incidents recorded the previous year, but the number categorised as crimes rose slightly from 6653 to 6672.
The most frequently recorded crime was racially aggravated conduct, accounting for over half of all race-related crimes recorded over the four years since statistics began.
Around half the victims are Pakistani or of other Asian origin, while 95% of known perpetrators are white.
Mr MacAskill said: "Our Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill will require the courts for the first time to record how racial or religious aggravation has affected any sentence. This will help give us a clearer picture of the number of crimes that have a racist element.
"The Scottish Government will not tolerate racist behaviour of any kind, whether on the street, at or around a football match or in a pub."
Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Baker said the slight drop in incidents was welcome but there was no room for complacency. "Most incidents are never reported and everything needs to be done that can be done so that people have the courage to come forward," he said.
He added that the tripling in attacks against "other-white" victims, believed to be primarily east Europeans, was of "very deep concern".
Bill Aitken, for the Conservatives, said the figures were "sad proof of people out there who will not grow up and leave past attitudes behind." He said all racism was disgusting, ruining lives and blighting communities.
Click here to comment on this story...
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 hereComments are closed on this article