UK hip-hop artist Stormzy has announced that he’ll be donating £10m (10 million pounds) to fight racism and supporting black people. The news comes in the wake of the ongoing protests against racism and police brutality in the United States.
The donation, which Stormzy described as the “beginning of a lifetime commitment,” will be made over the course of 10 years.
The rapper released a statement on Thursday announcing the decision:
“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.”
The latest initiative is largely spurred by the protests and social-shift being caused by George Floyd’s senseless murder in Minneapolis, but Stormzy also spoke out after other high-profile racially charged killings such as Philando Castile’s murder in 2016.
Stormzy was seen at the Black Lives Matter protests in London last weekend, and has been highly vocal about racism on social media and other media outlets. In 2019, he accused UK prime minister Boris Johnson of encouraging hate, and insisted “Britain has a racism problem it doesn’t like to admit.”. He also criticized former leader Theresa May publicly at the Brit Awards in 2018 for the handling of the highly publicized Grenfell Tower fire, and took part in a benefit to raise money for victims.
Stormzy is no stranger to putting his money where his mouth is and the £10m is just the latest contribution he’s made to supporting human rights. For the past two years, he’s provided scholarships to two black students attending the super prestigious Cambridge University, and was credited along with YouTuber Courtney Daniella for increasing the amount of black applicants to the institution.
If that wasn’t enough, in 2018 he launched a partnership with Penguin Random House to publish works from publish works from “underrepresented communities” under the imprint #MerkyBooks. Stormzy is also on the imprint’s roster of writers.
The Black Lives Matter movement needs to be supported indefinitely in order to make real change. We’ve compiled a list of resources and ways you can support Black Lives Matter, anti-racism and human rights.
