When I started presenting radio phone-in shows, almost 25 years ago now, one subject provoked an almost uniquely unanimous response on the switchboard. Black boys, caller after caller would contend, performed badly at school because their parents were feckless, disengaged and, in the case of fathers, disproportionately absent.
The contributors, and I doubt this needs a spoiler alert, were uniformly white, often elderly, and possessed of little or no personal experience of the demographic under discussion. So, of course, were the majority of presenters and columnists nodding along and fomenting these prejudices.
Exactly the same thing would happen with questions about a rather different disproportionality: “stop and search“. It was during a conversation about the practice being horribly skewed towards usually innocent young men of colour that I stumbled upon a key to unlocking the truth about both issues: confine contributions to the people the statistics described. Don’t call unless this story is about you.
The main answer to both supposed mysteries – and again I doubt you need to sit down to absorb this news – was the entrenched and institutional racism that historically beset our education and justice systems. The testimony of lived experience made the conclusion irresistible.
