Vaughan Gething won the Welsh Labour Party leadership contest on Saturday, and is set to become the first Black leader of Wales’ semi-autonomous government.
Gething, who is currently Welsh economy minister, narrowly beat Education Minister Jeremy Miles in a race to replace First Minister Mark Drakeford. Drakeford announced late last year he would step down once a replacement was chosen.
Gething, 50, won 51.7% of the votes cast by members of the party and affiliated trade unions, and Miles 48.3%.
Once he is confirmed next week by the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, where Labour is the largest party, Gething will become the fifth first minister since Wales’ national legislature was established in 1999.
The number seems to be pretty important. With very low percentages, it would not be unusual at all not to have any black national leaders. And considering how much it varies, with it being 0.8% in Wales and even less in some places, the likelihood of them becoming national leaders, assuming random chance, is tiny.
I looked it up, the real number across Europe is between 1 and 1.2%. Source here, although this only considers those of African descent, not sure how that affects the final total.
Your point remains valid if you consider only one cohort of national leaders. 44 countries in Europe, it seems reasonable that none would be black if only 1% of the population of Europe is black. But there isn’t just one cohort of leaders to consider… There’s another cohort every, 4-5 years or so. Even going back only to the beginning of the century that’s over 200, suddenly it seems like we should have had at least one. Obviously demographics have changed over time, but nonetheless it remains significant that there has never been one.
Every year going backwards the percentage gets even smaller and smaller. So not at all surprising and whatnot that there haven’t been black national leaders before. There haven’t been that many black people in Europe.