Black Britain Has An Employment Problem...

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Black Britain is more educated than ever, more represented than ever, more visible than ever. So, why is black unemployment in 2026 sitting at the same level as the pandemic? Answer is uncomfortable, and most people are probably going to get it wrong. Over the last 20 years, things have become very repetitive for black British people. A recession hits, the black community gets the blunt end of the stick, and then we are promised a recovery, and we're at the back of the line. It happened in the financial crisis in 2008, and again in COVID in 2020, and again in 2024. But you see, today is not just for me to look at the data, but to also give my opinion on some of the solutions.

[00:00:36]Because if we don't, the next generation will get the same broken deal that that we did. And I've got some data from the ONS, as well as some public research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundations and the TUC. All of this will be linked in the description for those of you that want to do some further digging. Now, let's get into it. If I told you in 2012 that 43% of young black British people, 16 to 24 years old in the UK, were unemployed, you'd say that's pretty high, right? I mean, it sounds pretty high to me. What if I told you by the end of 2020, that number was still hovering around 41.6%?

[00:01:08]Nearly 8 years apart, and less than a 2% difference. It's kind of scary that in 8 years, we've made a zero progress. You could argue that at these ages, most of the kids are in school, they're studying, so they're not really out there working. But statistically, that is not true, and it cannot be true actually. And I'll come back to that number a little bit later, because it's not a coincidence. It's actually a system. And once you see how it all works, and how it's all connected, it will be hard to ignore moving forward.

[00:01:34]Most people, when they hear about black unemployment, they think about the worst years. They think about the 2008 crash, COVID, the cost of living crisis. But that's not what we should be looking at.

[00:01:43]We should actually be looking at what is happening between those years, because that's when most of the damage is actually done. The TUC ran a very long study for around 21 years. It ran from 2001 to 2022. Across that period, black unemployment in the UK has never been less than twice the white rate. Not once, not in a single quarter, not in a single month, which is absolutely effing crazy. So, we can talk about recessions, recoveries, Tory governments, Labour governments, Brexit, COVID, boom years, bust years, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, even the lady with the cabbage, Liz Truss. It doesn't matter. The ratio has not moved. The faces in number 10 change, but the numbers don't. And you can't help but ask yourself, why? None of these politicians truly care about our community. So, we need to be doing more as a group of people to actually help each other, which is why I feel sometimes quite conflicted when I hear people say stuff like, you know, to be black is to be inherently political.

[00:02:40]Well, maybe in America, but not here in the UK. I disagree, but I digress because that's a different video. So, when the economy goes bad, black and white workers get fired. That's That's a fact. But, when the economy recovers, white workers get rehired first. UCL did a study and found that black applicants were 33% less likely to receive a job offer than like-for-like white candidates. The report is the first large-scale analysis to investigate the role of application and recruitment processes across sectors in driving inequality in access to professional roles. And you guys have all seen a study on this cuz I remember it coming out and it was pretty interesting. The cycle just keeps running decade after decade, and the worst-hit group is black women. Their unemployment rate compared to white women is 2.9 times higher. In 2008, it was 2.3 times higher. So, it's actually got worse, not better. And as black people, we are often told, you need to work twice as hard for half as much. Now, I'm not a woe is me type of character, but you know, I do believe if you're good at what you do, you can make it happen regardless of the color of your skin. But, we also have to factor in what we see in the numbers and compare it to what we see playing out in real life in front of our eyes. And the pay gap tells an even uglier story.

[00:03:51]Between 2012 and 2022, one ethnic group in Britain consistently earned less than white workers every single year for 10 unbroken years. And you probably guessed who. And the thing is the ONS publishes ethnicity pay gap data every single year. It's free, it's public, and you lot can go and read it. And this is the type of stuff that I like to do in my spare time sometimes. Across that 10-year stretch, there was only one group who never closed the gap, black African, Caribbean, or black British employees. In 2022, the median black hourly pay was around £13.50.

[00:04:23]The median white hourly pay was around £14.20.

[00:04:26]That's roughly a 5.5, 5.7% raw gap if we do the numbers. But the breakdown is a little bit sharper if we really dive a bit deeper into this cuz black African workers earn 8% less than white British.

[00:04:38]Black Caribbean workers earn 4% less.

[00:04:40]And remember, this is after 10 years of diversity and inclusion being the corporate buzzword of the decade.

[00:04:46]Remember when all you idiots were actually were posting black squares on Instagram?

[00:04:51]>> [laughter] >> And we thought that was going to bring us equality, right?

[00:04:56]>> [laughter] >> And what if we compare to other ethnic minorities in the UK? I hate that term cuz we aren't minority and we aren't minor, but I digress. Indian workers in Britain actually earn more than the white British average. Chinese workers earn significantly more. The ethnic minority pay gap you hear about is not really an ethnic minority pay gap. It's a black, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi pay gap if we actually refer to the data.

[00:05:17]And I'll explain why this all matters when I round this up, but it's important to note that not all non-whites have the same struggle. And And that's why I don't like to use the word BAME cuz I don't think that that's a fair way to represent what we go through. So, why does this actually happen? Because it's not because black workers are less educated. Black African graduates have some of the highest degree completion rates in Britain. So, laziness is not something that can be levied at them and at us. We're also 47% of the public administration, education, and health workforce. We're literally holding the country together and we're making sure the country's running smoothly. Without us, this country wouldn't have rebuilt itself after the war and it wouldn't be where it is right now. But, the issue is that we're concentrated in lower-paid jobs within these higher-paid sectors.

[00:06:01]Like, yeah, we are in the NHS, but we're cleaning the NHS. We're not exactly running the NHS. We tend to find ourselves at the bottom of the food chain within these institutions. It's a bit like football. Like, 40% of footballers in the Prem are black, but less than 5% of managers are black. And I don't believe there is a single black owner of a football club. If there is, forgive me. I didn't research that.

[00:06:20]So, but in some ways, the cleaners, the the nurses, the you know, they are footballers. They're doing the work on the pitch, but at the director level and the highest management levels, we are not represented. And I hope that comparison made sense because I kind of just made that up like right now. Not in my script. But, hopefully it made sense.

[00:06:36]It's not perfect. Half of black Africans and black Caribbean people in this country had less than 1,000 pounds in family savings on the eve of the pandemic. And basically, if you miss two paychecks, you're done. And for a lot of families, savings can be tied into inheritance. Between 2018 and 2020, the average British person inherited around 3,000 pounds. The average black African inherited nothing. So, when your nan dies and leaves you nothing, it's not because she didn't love you, it's because she had nothing to leave. And her nan had nothing to leave her. So, when I talk about housing and property as a foundation to wealth, that's the reason why. Again, owning property will not make you rich, in my opinion, but it builds a base for many of us, especially those of us that have come from immigrant families. And this is what intergenerational mean. It's not just, oh, your parents struggled, your great-grandparents struggled. And the system has been carefully designed to make sure that that struggle compounds.

[00:07:26]Uh it's designed to make sure that it it doesn't get better. So, there was a 20-page report that was done between 2006 and 2018. And you can find this on Google. It was written by someone called George Bangham. It's only 20 pages, so it wasn't really that difficult to get through. It's called A Gap That Won't Close, which is an absolutely diabolical name, by the way. But, between those years, the wealth difference between Indian households at the top and black African households at the bottom grew both in relative terms and absolute terms. And now, you might be thinking, "Hold on, Indian households at the top, but they came at the same time, roughly, as Caribbeans. Why are they thriving and we're not?" But, it's a question that I feel nobody really tackles fairly, so I'm going to try my very best to to do it some justice. In 2022, the Indian employment rate in the UK was 77%. The black employment rate was 69%. Indian workers also have the highest median pay of any major ethnic group. Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, who started lower than black communities in the early 2000s, have now overtaken black British employment in some metrics.

[00:08:30]Pakistani, Bangladeshi employment rose about 17 percentage points between 2004 and 2022, and black employment rose by nine. So, the question is, why? And there's three reasons that I personally found. One is self-employment and family business culture. South Asian communities, particularly Indians, built networks of family-owned businesses very, very early on. Corner shops, restaurants, pharmacies, accountancy practices.

[00:08:55]Basically, when they were discriminated against and they got locked out, they hired each other.

[00:09:01]Whereas, black British communities, particularly the Caribbean community, we integrated into the British workforce a bit more directly, which meant we were more exposed to the discrimination of British employers with fewer alternative routes. The second thing is capital and remittances.

[00:09:16]Indian migration to Britain in the '60s and '70s often came via East Africa, where families had built up businesses and capital before they arrived with assets. Whereas, Caribbean migrants on Windrush were actively recruited as labor. We had a different starting wealth and different outcomes. And then, three, which is, you know, maybe a bit more controversial, is the marriage and household structure. Indian, Bangladeshi households are far more likely to be dual income marriage households with multiple generational living. That means that they can pull all their wealth together, they reduce the child care cost, and it creates a compound advantage. In black Caribbean communities, single parent households are the majority. It's a sociological fact with a massive economic consequence. And we don't talk about it enough. And regardless of your opinion on marriage, what we can say is that two incomes are better than one when it comes to your building wealth and raising kids and so on and so forth.

[00:10:07]I've spoken about this probably one too many times. I'm not saying we should go and copy all the Indians, but I am saying that we should study what worked.

[00:10:14]Network economics, pooled capital, multi-generational planning, they're not racial traits. They're actually strategies, and strategies can be adapted, but it's something that we just don't do enough. And here's the thing that nobody admits. The BAME or ethnic minority label hides all of this because when the BBC reports on ethnic minority unemployment, they average Indian doctors and black drivers and pretend that average means something. It doesn't. We need to stop using that lazy aggregation. It hides who's actually struggling. I really don't like the term BAME, as you can probably tell. So, black Britain has a structural employment problem, a structural pay problem, a structural wealth problem, and we can see other minority groups doing better. Now we have to ask the harder questions, which is where does the damage actually start? And the answer is depressing because it starts at school. In British education today, black girls are doing fine. Black boys are failing. And to be specific, I'm talking about black British Caribbean boys. Black African girls outperform the national average at GCSE level. You may say GCSEs don't mean much, but that's not the point here. And if we look at black Caribbean girls, they have closed most of the gap with white British girls. They go to university at higher rates, they get degrees, they show up.

[00:11:22]Black African boys are doing well as well, just below average, but black Caribbean boys, they're at the bottom of almost every educational metric in Britain. School exclusion rates are roughly three times the white average.

[00:11:33]We have the lowest GCSE attainment of any major group. We are pushed uh disproportionately into pupil referral units. We have low university entry rates. And then, surprise, surprise, the worst employment outcomes of any UK-born group. Now, this is not because black boys are less intelligent. It's because the British school system fails them in three specific ways. One is exclusion is more of a default. Black Caribbean boys are far more likely to be excluded for behavior that white boys get a warning for. Once excluded, the path to a decent qualification becomes narrower and brutal. You know, you're more likely to enter the criminal justice pipeline rather than the university pipeline once you get kicked out from school. At number two is there are slightly lower teacher expectations for black boys.

[00:12:17]Multiple studies have shown that teachers consistently rate black boys' work lower than identical work submitted by white students. They get streamed into lower sets, given less challenging material, and stop being seen as a university material by age 13. Number three is the absent role models in school. The British teaching workforce is over 90% white. A black boy can go through an entire school career without ever being taught by a black male teacher. Imagine being told to imagine yourself as a doctor, engineer, or barrister when no adult in front of you has ever looked like you. People don't understand the power of that. The school system is the conveyor belt. If you fall off at age 14, you're being dropped into the lowest-paid, most insecure parts of the labor market for the rest of your working life. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't escape that and, you know, achieve great things. Please don't get my words misconstrued, but I'm just stating the pattern here. Black girls, by contrast, are riding the conveyor belt all the way to graduation, which is why the unemployment gap between black women and white women is now 2.9 times worse than the unemployment gap between black men and white men. So, the school system is one half of the trap. The other half is is happens when our young people walk out of school and into the job market. And that part, as you're about to see, is where the rigging really gets kind of obvious. In 1969, researchers in Britain ran an experiment. They sent identical job applications, literally. They only changed the name on the CV. So, names like John Smith or or James got callbacks. Names like Olu Adebayo got silence. The discrimination rate was pretty massive and and pretty obvious.

[00:13:50]In 2019, Oxford researchers ran the exact same experiment, same method, identical CVs, only different names. And here's what they found. Black British applicants needed to send roughly 60% more applications than white British applicants to get the same number of callbacks. In those 50 years, you know, we've landed on the moon, we invented internet, apartheid ended, we made TikTok, and somehow British recruiters are still binning CVs the moment they see an African or a more Caribbean-sounding name. Researcher Anthony Heath put it in simple terms.

[00:14:20]The absence of any real decline in discrimination against black British and Pakistani applicants is, quote, "a disturbing finding which calls into question the effectiveness of previous policies." In other words, every diversity and inclusion course, every unconscious bias training session, every glossy corporate diversity report, all of it has had no measurable effect on the actual decisions recruiters make when they see your name as a black person. Again, I'm not trying to be doom and gloom, but I just want to paint the picture clearly for everyone to actually see what's going on. Because the problem here is very obvious. A Nigerian with a top degree and 3 years of relevant experience still has to send twice as many applications as a white candidate to be taken seriously for the same role.

[00:15:03]If that's not an issue to some of you, I don't know what is. Now, think about what this does to a young person. You graduate, you apply for 50 jobs, you hear back from three, your white friend applies for 50 jobs, and he hears back from 12. You start to wonder if you're the problem. But you're not, but you might feel like that. And the good thing about these studies is it shows what the real truth actually is. And this is why the wealth gap, the pay gap, and the unemployment gap are not three separate problems. They are all expressions of one underlying cause, and it is the system is filtering us out before we even get a chance to compete. So, if hiring is rigged, what about the obvious solutions? The one that half of Britain swears by and the other half swears at.

[00:15:41]Affirmative action, diversity quotas, positive discrimination. I know it seems more like a thing in the US rather than the UK, but these policies are present here in the UK, too. It just isn't in your face or as prominent. But, the real question is, does it work? I have to be really, really honest on my thoughts and my beliefs regarding this. So, I may upset a couple of people in the next couple of minutes because, you know, stay with me. Now, the people who think affirmative action is the answer, it isn't. But, well, it is, but not on its own anyway. And then there's people who think that affirmative action is the problem. You're also wrong, but I'm going to explain why I think that as well. The actual evidence will probably say that it sits somewhere in the middle. And I hate to be a fence-sitter, but that's the reality. Britain doesn't really have American-style affirmative action. What we do have over here is the Equality Act of 2020 No, 2010. 2010. And that basically permits something called positive action. This basically means that an employer can prefer a candidate from an underrepresented group only when two candidates are equally qualified. It does not allow quotas. It does not allow racial preference at start of the process. It's been law for 16 years.

[00:16:51]But, the real question is, how is it actually going? Reviews have been done, and there was one particular um study or review, I guess, and the ethnic representation on FTSE 350 boards were basically tracked over a certain period of time. And around 2 years ago, after years of voluntary diversity targets, 95% of FTSE 100 companies had at least one ethnic minority director. Which, on paper, that sounds pretty good. But, here's the real catch, though. Black directors specifically hold 2.3% of FTSE 100 board positions and that is below their share of the working age population. And black senior management representation hovers at around 1.3%.

[00:17:29]When we talk about diversity success, they're not always talking about black success. So we have to make that very clear. Black professionals are going backwards while everyone else is going forwards. And a lot of these targets don't really have enforcement. So it kind of just sounds like decorative diversity rather than real diversity. A few faces at the top to satisfy the photographer and the actual pipeline stays closed. You see when everyone posted those black square photos?

[00:17:53]Performative. A performative action. So here's what I think the the truth around affirmative action should be. And because pure quotas, I don't think work. They create a diversity higher stigma that follows the recipient through their entire career.

[00:18:08]It doesn't address the structural issues underneath. And it's basically why people go on GB News and think that black people have an unfair advantage.

[00:18:16]Sorry, I watch GB News sometimes just to see what the other side think. Don't don't judge me. But also, if we just let the market sort it out, it doesn't work either. Because the hiring discrimination data is 50 years old and it's unchanged. I just went through it. The market had its chance and it failed as well. It failed us as black men and women. What I think could work is a third option. Something that I kind of call conditional accountability.

[00:18:39]You require companies of a certain size to publish their ethnicity pay gap by ethnic group, not by using BAME. Please, don't no more BAME. You require them to publish hiring funnel data. Who applied?

[00:18:51]Who interviewed? Who got hired? You make discrimination measurable, public and embarrassing. And you find black-led organizations to challenge the worst offenders in tribunal. It might be uncomfortable for these businesses, but at least everyone is held accountable.

[00:19:07]Companies can say, "Well, black people didn't even apply for the role." Then no one can be hurt. No one can argue. The fingers will be pointed at the communities. Why are we not going for these top roles and positions that we are qualified for? You see how this can all work and come together if we had a system like this in place?

[00:19:22]That's not affirmative action. It's what I call affirmative transparency. It's already partly happening. The Labour government proposed equality, race, and disability bill would make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory for employees with over 250 members of staff.

[00:19:39]And that That's a meaningful start, but based on Whitehall's track record, expect it to take until 2027 or maybe 2055 to actually produce reports in another 5 years and then another 50 years to see any real change. And if Reform get in power, just expect that to get scrapped completely.

[00:19:58]But neither of those is enough on its own. The actual fix has to be much bigger and much more comfortable and it has to come from us as much as it comes from government and and and them guys in the suits. So now I want to break down what we can actually do cuz I'm trying to be solution-focused here. And it's a five-part fix, so you're going to have to stick with me for a little bit longer. Three for the state where we live and two for us as a community. I'm starting with the state because as a community, we are very good at telling the government what to do and frankly less good at doing things ourselves. So let's get the easy part out of the way first. The state has basically three jobs, right? One, mandatory ethnic pay gap reporting. I just said that, but I want to make that clear. Not BAME, but separate it. Black Africans, Black Caribbeans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese, separate, okay?

[00:20:43]Make discrimination visible because Britain only started taking the gender pay gap [clears throat] seriously when the reporting became mandatory around almost 10 years ago. So the same logic will apply to this. Number two is you need to reform the school exclusion system. There is no reason for Black Caribbean boys to be excluded at three times the rate of white boys, right? We need to cap school exclusion rates by ethnicity, force schools to publish their numbers and create automatic reviews of every exclusion involving a black student. Add to this a national program to recruit black male teachers, particularly into primary schools in inner cities, London, Birmingham, Manchester. We can't keep producing generations of boys who never see a man who looks like them in front of a classroom. Now, what I just said might sound mad to people, but just listen to it again. Anyway, three, we need to recognize overseas qualifications. A Nigerian doctor with 11 years of training should not be working as a hospital porter. A Ghanaian engineer should not be driving Uber. The current system asks foreign trained professionals to redo years of qualifications, often at their own expense, which blocks them from contributing to the economy at the level that they're capable of. Streamline that. The country needs the labor, and we need our community working at full strength. None of these are particularly radical. They're administrative fixes that any government with the will could implement in two parliaments. The reason they haven't happened is not that they're impossible. The truth is that nobody in power really feels enough pressure to do anything about it. I.e., nobody gives a about black people.

[00:22:16]>> [laughter] >> Which means our job is to create that pressure. Vote, lobby, organize, make this an issue politicians can't dodge or ignore.

[00:22:25]And however you feel about voting, I'm not a big proponent of voting, but I do think that if we did more, we could get more.

[00:22:31]And here's the truth that is going to hurt some of you watching this right now. Even if every one of those state-level fixes happened tomorrow, our community would still be behind because none of this isn't about Westminster, it's also about us. And the next two solutions are the ones that actually in our control, in my opinion. So, let me break this down.

[00:22:51]I'm expecting to get some angry comments after this one. So, now look, there are two things our community can do that don't require any government or any policy or any white person's permission, right? Number one is build economic networks the way Indian and Bangladeshi Britain did 50 years ago. We've been waiting for British employers to hire us fairly for 50 years, and the data says that they won't. So, stop waiting. Let's start owning. I may not agree 100% with what Elaine the Pain says, but I stand with her on this one thing. We need to start thinking about ownership. And I'll be real. I have this constant internal battle when I say that because I think about capitalism and what it does to our people, and also how capitalism is inherently tied to racism. But, that is another video. A more of a personal thing for me to explore, if I'm being honest. But, as we live today and within the structures we have been given, we need to find a way. And that means black-owned businesses hiring black graduates, black professionals mentoring black students, black-run investment groups pooling capital together the same way that the Asian kitty and chit funds do. The thing is, we have the skills and we have the talent. I don't think we quite have the network, so let's build the network. If you're a black business owner watching this, the next time you've got a junior role open, look at a black graduate who's been ignored by 20 other firms. Take the bet. We are sitting on a generation of overqualified and underemployed [clears throat] talent, and that's an opportunity that I think that we are ignoring right now.

[00:24:12]Number two is, we need to fix our household economics. AKA, brothers, stop having kids with women you don't want to marry or have as a life partner. Keep your things in your boxes. Stop having kids if you're not ready. It's an economic trap, and I'm speaking specifically to my Caribbean brothers because we are doing a terrible job. And I have to hold you guys accountable, man. I'm 30, I ain't got no kids, and there's a reason why.

[00:24:34]Because I know that I ain't ready yet.

[00:24:36]I'mma get there when I'm ready. Listen, multi-generational households, dual income partnerships, and deliberate wealth pooling, deliberate inheritance planning. These are not white things or Asian things. These are tools, tools that we've underused in our community. I can't even say it's a lack of education.

[00:24:52]I'm not even letting that slide anymore.

[00:24:54]Once I was old enough to understand how sex, marriage, dating, how that all worked, I knew that having kids is something that I'm going to have to delay until the right situation finds me, no matter how much fun I'm having out on these streets. Statistically, black Caribbean households are the most likely to be single parent in Britain.

[00:25:10]That puts a single adult, usually a woman, working two jobs while raising kids, caring for elders. It is biologically, economically, unsustainable. It it it crushes wealth-building opportunities. We have to be honest about partnership, commitment, about pooling resources, and about teaching financial literacy from primary school in our own homes, cuz we've outsourced that conversation to the school system, and the school system has ultimately failed us. So, we have to bring it back home. And none of this is about blame. Our grandparents, our great-grandparents, they came here on Windrush, and they were placed in housing nobody else wanted. Our grandparents were hired into jobs nobody else wanted. Our parents were the first generation to push into universities, the professions, you know, and ultimately, the system has effed us a little bit. But, we're the first generation with the platform that they are and the tools to actually build a little bit differently. And when I say build differently, I'm talking about networking, mentoring, hiring each other, putting capital together, marrying with a real purpose, inherit on purpose, plan for grandchildren you ain't met yet. And that's how things like this will change over time. It's not going to happen overnight. It does take time. But, we are the generation to fix that. And here's the last thing that I'll leave, the one thing that ties this all together, because as much as the state matters and as much as our individual choices matter, there is a third thing that decides whether this generation breaks the cycle or it continues it. We have to stop letting other people tell our story. For the last 50 years, the dominant story about black Britain in the mainstream media has been one of two narratives, either the victim narrative, where we're objects of pity and policy failure, or the entertainer narrative, where we win Olympic medals and chart-top albums and and we sing great songs and we, you know, we make music for the charts. And somehow that's proof that everything's fine. You know, we're doing okay. But both sides of the story are wrong. We're not broken, but we're not 100% fixed.

[00:27:06]We're only a community of 3 million people in this country of 68 million.

[00:27:11]And we're already doing great things in some places. While in some places where we're failing pretty pretty badly. There was a famous report done in 2021. A lot of you may remember this, but it basically found that and it concluded that Britain was no longer deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. The report was basically used to roll back a lot of race equality programs. The Windrush Implementation Unit was disbanded. Ethnicity pay gap reporting was delayed. In my opinion, there was a lot of harm that was done off the back of that report. And the guy that basically managed the report, his name was Tony Sewell. Tony Sewell is black.

[00:27:45]But I mean, I've listened to him talk.

[00:27:48]He's incredibly intelligent and has more connections than I will ever have in a lifetime. But sometimes we have to look at what's actually playing out in front of our eyes and marry that with the data that we see. And the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

[00:28:01]We need our own data, our own analysis, our own commentators and our own platforms. People telling black British stories with black British numbers in black British voices. We can't outsource truth telling about our community to people who have never lived in our community. And this is why videos like this are important. Not because I got all the answers. I don't I never claim to have the answers, but because the conversation has to begin somewhere and it can't just be on the BBC or some diversity panel. So we've got to tell our own stories. We've got to hire our own people. We've got to build our own networks. We've got to vote, mobilize, organize, mentor, marry deliberately, save deliberately, inherit deliberately.

[00:28:36]And when somebody tells you black Britain has made real progress, ask them one question.

[00:28:42]Compared to what? Because in the last 17 years, amongst three economic crisis, two government race reviews, hundreds of corporate diversity statements, and after all of that, the same two-to-one unemployment ratio has stayed the same the whole time. But, to end it on a more positive note, this is also true. We are more educated, we are more visible, and we are more connected than we've ever been. And I think that we are also now become more politically aware.

[00:29:07]I do genuinely believe that. The numbers do tell us that the system has not changed, but the numbers also tell us that we have changed. And if we use what we have now, yeah, the wealth, the data, the platforms, the networks, the next 17 years do not have to look like the last 17 years. It's not down to the government to fix this. It never was, cuz they're never going to save us.

[00:29:27]They're not going to fix us, not here.

[00:29:28]But, it can be on us to fix it for ourselves. So, if this hit home for you, just do me a small favor. At number one, there's a link below in the description to buy me a coffee. My mouth's a bit dry. I like a bit of coffee. Buy me a coffee. Share this video with someone you know, like, share, and subscribe, all that good stuff. And if you want to go a little bit deeper into the black wealth gap, I made a video here breaking down the brutal reality of black wealth in the UK. Until then, look after your people. We've got this. I'll see you on the other side. Oh, and buy me a rasclat coffee.