Is class rather than race a bigger barrier to success in Britain?

Is Britain racist? At times, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. In recent years, our country has experienced considerable turbulence on the subject of race and equality. The spread of the American Black Lives Matter movement on these shores in the summer of 2020 – which led to protests from the Isle of Wight on England’s southern coast to Scotland’s Shetland Islands – contributed towards an acceleration in race-focused thinking. Yet the reality is that Britain is a tolerant place in which race does not usually hold people back.

Ethnic minorities in the UK regularly outperform the white-British population in various spheres of life. Indulging in footballing analogies, the non-white Indian and Chinese ethnic groups are the Manchester City and Liverpool of socio-economic integration, from their impressive levels of school attainment to professional successes in the labour market.