Fellow's Profile
Fellow's Profile
How America's influential black middle class was built
Researching how Black minorities build cultural and economic capital: and what they do with it
2023
I am a correspondent on Channel 4 News. My work has focused on how culture and technology interacts with race and class. My book, Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy, published by Atlantic Books, is a critical examination of the influencer economy and the digital working class.
I have been the recipient of awards from the the Medical Journalists' Association and the Edinburgh TV Festival. My journalism has also been nominated for the Orwell Prize, the British Journalism Awards and for a BAFTA as executive editor of the Channel 4 News special Black to Front.
The current affairs programme I led looked at British power and history through the lens of Black Britons. It included a feature I commissioned and directed interested in what Black Britons in the highest social groups do with their cultural and political power. However, there was a notable lack of wider data on who they are, what they think and how they do and do not wield influence, which I am attempting to correct. This research has launched a domestic and trans-Atlantic study that will draw a point of comparison with the USA where much of the contemporary debate on race is led.
Symeon Brown (CF2023) took part in a panel interview on BBC Radio Four's discussion series 'Free Thinking'. The programme theme was the middle - 'from taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position in the middle out of fashion?'
By Symeon Brown, 8 May 2026
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Symeon Brown (CF2023) took part in a panel interview on BBC Radio Four's discussion series 'Free Thinking'. The programme theme was the middle - 'from taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position in the middle out of fashion?'
By Symeon Brown, 8 May 2026
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
