To get underneath that tension, Brown interviewed about 1,500 members of Britain’s black middle class about their education, employment, families, aspirations, spending, social values and, of course, class. “It is very rare to hear someone say, ‘I’m black and middle class,’ in Britain,” Brown says. He describes himself, in the end, not as middle class but as “multi-class”, adding: “I’ll never really be read as middle class, because of my accent and other things.” Like the traditional white middle class, it’s a sort of “if you know, you know” crowd. The Good, the Black and the Boujee: How Black Britain Became Middle Class by Symeon Brown is published by Dialogue (£25).