{"id":125,"date":"2026-08-19T08:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/english-joy\/?p=125"},"modified":"2026-08-19T08:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:42:19","slug":"its-rare-to-hear-im-black-and-middle-class-symeon-brown-on-black-britains-enduring-taboo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s rare to hear: I\u2019m black and middle class\u2019 \u2013 Symeon Brown on black Britain\u2019s enduring \u2018taboo\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain\u2019s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country\u2019s black professional class more thoroughly than anyone ever had \u2013 and who remembers being told by Lammy that he could \u201cnever become prime minister, because you sound like where you come from\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It was 2010, and Brown, interested in politics, was interning for the then Labour backbencher. \u201cAnd he was right, certainly at the time,\u201d Brown says now.<\/p>\n<p>ymeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain\u2019s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country\u2019s black professional class more thoroughly than anyone ever had \u2013 and who remembers being told by Lammy that he could \u201cnever become prime minister, because you sound like where you come from\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It was 2010, and Brown, interested in politics, was interning for the then Labour backbencher. \u201cAnd he was right, certainly at the time,\u201d Brown says now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain\u2019s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country\u2019s black professional class more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-19-at-14.26.54.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joynepalen.kantipurinfotech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}