Stormzy pledges £10 million to support racial justice

Stormzy and #Merky have announced plans to donate £10 million to “organisations, charities and movements that are committed to fighting racial inequality, justice reform and black empowerment within the UK” across 10 years.

The rapper and company have committed to a lifetime of backing these causes, with financial pledge just the start.

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Stormzy said: “The uncomfortable truth that our country continuously fails to recognise and admit, is that black people in the UK have been at a constant disadvantage in every aspect of life - simply due to the colour of our skin.

“I’m lucky enough to be in the position I’m in and I’ve heard people often dismiss the idea of racism existing in Britain by saying “if the country’s so racist how have you become a success?!” and I reject that with this: I am not the UK’s shining example of what supposedly happens when a black person works hard.

“There are millions of us. We are not far and few. We have to fight against the odds of a racist system stacked against us and designed for us to fail from before we are even born. Black people have been playing on an uneven field for far too long and this pledge is a continuation in the fight to finally try and even it.”

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In 2017 Stornzy donated £9,000 to help fund south-west Londoner Fiona Asiedu to go to Harvard University in the US, and in 2018 he launched The Stormzy Scholarship to fund four Black British undergraduates to attend the University of Cambridge.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Features Editor, follow him on Twitter

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