“Welcome to our world” – BLG responds to new study on the experiences of Black people in Britain

New research on the experiences of Black people in Britain underlines the issues the Black Leadership Group (BLG) has been campaigning on for the last three years.

Launched in 2020 as a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the Voice newspaper and the I-Cubed consultancy, during the Black Lives Matter protests, The Black British Voices research project has produced findings, published on 28 September 2023, that are all too depressingly familiar to BLG, its members and its affiliates.

The study, which surveyed more than 11,000 black Britons across 16 topics such as Britishness, education and the criminal justice system, highlighted the impact of systemic racism in respondents’ sense of belonging and life opportunities.

The findings are a wake-up call and further evidence of the “chronic level of racial disparities” that black Britons face in the UK, say some campaigners. Today, BLG welcomed the report as an important reminder of the struggle of *Black communities in Britain, but said it revealed no surprises.

Black Leadership Group Director Amarjit Basi said: “Welcome to our world. The findings of this research are pertinent to the very issues we and our members, affiliates and allies have been campaigning on since the murder of George Floyd more than three years ago. 

“While our group focuses primarily on the wide disparities in education, in the representation of Black communities at leadership level and in student attainment levels, we know that racism in this country has an impact on Black people in every part of their lives. We have experienced this ourselves and, through our Ethnic Equity in Education campaign and other initiatives, we’re determined to help shape a fairer society for all, in education and beyond.  

“How many ‘wake-up calls’ does this country need? The attacks, discrimination and disparities continue and they are a result of systemic failure, all at a time when we should all be focused on making the most of an ethnically diverse Post-Brexit Britain. We need urgent, profound change but for this to happen, we need it to become a priority for those with the power to lead it. We know what works but there has been an absence of leadership in recent years to address systemic racism, and the findings of this study simply remind us of the results of this.”

* BLG uses ‘Black’ as an inclusive definition for people from ethnically diverse backgrounds who share a lived experience of the effects of racism.

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