27 years on from Stephen Lawrence’s murder, sickening online abuse emphasises our racially intolerant society – Simon Carter

I tuned in last Thursday to watch the ITV discussion programme looking at racism in the UK, 27 years on from the murder of Stephen Lawrence in south east London. ‘Has Britain Changed?’ was the title; it was a rhetorical question if ever there was one.
Stephen Lawrence was 18 when he was stabbed to death at a south London bus stop in 1993. Photo by Metropolitan Police via Getty Images.Stephen Lawrence was 18 when he was stabbed to death at a south London bus stop in 1993. Photo by Metropolitan Police via Getty Images.
Stephen Lawrence was 18 when he was stabbed to death at a south London bus stop in 1993. Photo by Metropolitan Police via Getty Images.

Coming just days after two Premier League footballers - Wilfreid Zaha at Crystal Palace and Sheffield United’s David McGoldrick - received sickening abuse on social media, it is obvious that as a nation we still have a very long way to go. When it was revealed that a 12-year-old boy had been arrested for abusing Zaha - including sending images of the Klu Klux Klan - we know we are only a short way down any path towards meaningful change.

If you needed any further evidence - and if you did, you are part of the problem - Bristol City's Famara Diedhiou was racially abused on Twitter this weekend. As a result of missing a penalty against Swansea, he was sent a message included three banana emojis. The path towards meaningful change could be a very long one.

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Rageh Omaar chaired a fascinating discussion on ITV, even though the programme painted the sort of bleak picture I was expecting.

Among the headline stats found in a survey conducted for the programme, nearly a third of black people said that racism had got worse in their lifetime, while the majority of Britons believe that racism is rife in the UK

To no huge surprise, black respondents are twice as likely as white respondents to say that racism is widespread.

The survey also discovered that 77% of black people have experienced racial abuse in person. Almost four in every five people! That’s a statistic which should make every white person hang their heads in collective shame.

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To the horror of the Met Police assistant commissioner Helen Ball, who was on the panel, it was also revealed 77% of black people, 59% of ethnic minority people and 42% of white people believe the police are racist.

Those are very high figures - Ms Ball accurately described them as ‘devastating’ - but would they have been so high if the same people had been asked prior to George Floyd’s death and the subsequent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement? Maybe, maybe not.

But leaving that to one side, the fact 42% of white people think the police are racist in this country was, to me, a shocking statistic. If that is a true indication of the views held by people of my race, we have even more work to do - as a society, not just as a police force - than I imagined.

Back in 1999, the McPherson Report, a 350-page report on the inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, was a bombshell dossier for the Met, revealing the investigation into the killing had been ‘marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership’.

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Over two decades on, the fact so many people in this country believe very little has changed is incredibly worrying. I have to believe our police forces have made significant changes to their working practices since 1999 regarding racism; we, as a society, have to believe that. But it is clear - alarmingly clear, in fact - that so many people feel they haven’t.

When the programme started, I told my partner that, in my view, racism HAS improved since the 1980s. The longer it went on, though, I began to have second thoughts.

I mean, I’m a white bloke - what do I know about racism? I was born and brought up in Devon in the 70s and 80s, hardly the most multi-ethnic region in England. There were only a handful of children from BAME backgrounds in my secondary school and none in my junior school. It was as far removed from Brixton as was possible to be. I repeat - what do I REALLY know about racism? What do any of us who are reading this who are white REALLY know either? How CAN we know?

The former England footballer John Barnes, one of the panellists, spoke well - indeed, I have rarely heard any sportsman (whether still playing or retired) speak to eloquently and passionately about a subject. Barnes said that while overt racism had decreased – apart from, it seems, social media - the same could not be said about covert racism.

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I grew up in a far more violent, openly racist era than we live in now - I remember inner-city riots in areas like St Pauls, Toxteth, Brixton and Handsworth, the National Front marches, bananas thrown at John Barnes, monkey noises at professional football matches (even the lower division ones I used to watch). So yes, in terms of overt racism, UK2020 is an improvement on UK1981.

That is saying something, but it’s not saying as much as needs to be said.

Barnes was right to admit education is the way forward, and absolutely spot on again to say we cannot ignore the past. We have to educate our children, and our children’s children, about the past if we are to ever start to build a better, more racially tolerant, society. But first, today’s adults have to educate themselves. We have to educate ourselves.

Without that happening, we will still be having the same conversations in another 27 years.