DIVERSITY got a boost this week as some of the black community’s most high profile achievers came together to launch a new campaigning and education group, the Black Equity Organisation (BEO).
Historian and presenter Professor David Olusoga OBE, communications boss’ WPP country manager Karen Blackett, and artistic director of the Young Vic Theatre Kwame Kwei-Armah are all founding members of the organisation.
As part of the launch, a powerful campaign video called ‘Change Is Here’ was released on Wednesday (25th May), voiced by Bridgerton actress Adjoa Andoh.
The video includes images taken by photographer Misan Harriman, the first black man to shoot a cover of British Vogue. It is the first national and independent civil-rights group in the UK.
Dame Vivian Hunt, chairman of the trustees said given the cost-of-living crisis it is “more urgent than ever we have a voice for black Britons”.
BEO’s launch coincides with the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in the US which paved way for the movements like Black Lives Matter and sparked a wave of anti-racism protests across the world.
Dame Vivian commented: “The George Floyd anniversary is significant because it really was a tragic event that resulted in a real global response. Technology meant that we all saw the videos and the injustice in real-time and the reaction that you saw across the streets of Britain and all around the world was a very human reaction to human rights violations and particular recognition that we simply haven’t done enough around black people’s lived experience.”
“I was really struck that the protests, response, and empathy in the UK were not only black Britons. There were people from all walks of life, huge amounts of young people, and a real response at a human level to the injustices that black Britons continue to face”, she added.
In July 2020, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy chaired a call with Dame Vivian and a host of the UK’s most influential black leaders to lament the “lack of a national unified voice” to respond to injustices and “tear down institutionally racist systems”.
Dame Vivian said BEO will be working in collaboration with grassroots groups who have the “experience” to address the issues, but not the scale.
She said: “These issues are not new. However, we lacked a national scale of impact in addressing them, which is why they still exist.”
Funds are raised from black British philanthropists to make their founding be rooted in black British philanthropy itself.
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