Intelligent action is required when black workers' pay gap widens the more qualifications they obtain

If you are black in Britain, the harder you strive, the worse it gets. That is the bleak conclusion of new research by the TUC into job prospects for our different communities, which we report exclusively today. If you are black, leave school as early as possible and work stacking shelves or digging holes, you can be confident that you will earn roughly the same as your white workmates. You will not get rich, but you may avoid becoming bitter.

If, on the other hand, you smile through the patronising pats on the head and punch your way up through the glass ceiling of race, where do you find yourself? In a topsy-turvy world where, the higher you rise, the wider yawns the gap between your pay and that of your white colleagues.

The figures don’t lie. Quit school after obtaining some GCSEs and your pay, as a black person, will be 13.6 per cent less than that of whites. At A-level, the gap widens to 17 per cent. Stick with the education system through university and your efforts will be rewarded by seeing it increase yet further, to 23 per cent – £4.30 less for every hour you work.

And, when you get there, it’s still lonely at the top. As the Prime Minister noted on Saturday, there are no black generals and only 4 per cent of chief executives of FTSE companies are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. Out of 2,500 students who started a degree at Oxford in 2014, only 27 were black – a little over 1 per cent. Meanwhile, a quarter of inmates of our prisons belong to a minority group, even though they amount to 14 per cent of the population at large. As a member of an ethnic minority, you stand a better chance of occupying a prison cell than a place at a top university.

In Britain, we tend to be complacent about this issue: our last serious riots occurred back in 2011; we have neither the seething banlieues of French cities nor the deep-rooted black-versus-police malaise of the US; and minorities in public life and on our television screens are now too numerous to mention. But these shocking statistics show that complacency is not in order.

That is why we salute David Cameron for calling attention to the problem, and appointing a figure as credible as David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, to head a review into its causes. The appointment, and indeed his highlighting of the issue, may be a typical instance of Cameron guile, but that does not vitiate its value. And he does not exaggerate the problem: as he says, improving the lives of black Britons will require revolutions in both schools and justice.

Black educational achievement is unacceptably low. To reverse that, a strenuous assault on a culture of low expectations in the state sector is needed. Some of the Government’s reforms, from free schools to focusing on academic subjects, will help. In the justice system, there is an urgent need to address incarceration rates. Too many non-violent offenders go to prison, and black people are disproportionately affected by this. We need to make sure that we lock up only the people who need to be locked up, and that prison rehabilitates as well as punishes.

In some circles abroad it is taken for granted that our attempt to build a fair and harmonious multi-ethnic society is bound to fail. That is not the case, but it will take intelligent effort at many different levels to make it succeed. Roll on the happy day when we can all stop wailing about race. It may take some time.