ABSTRACT
Every book is written in a particular time and in a particular place, and time and place are necessarily woven into the very fabric of every manuscript, and this book is no exception. This book addresses an important and sensitive topic at an important and sensitive time for us all in terms of questions about race and fairness and discrimination, explicit or implicit, at the institutional level or personal level. I started on the final chapter of this book in the week that President Barack Obama, the first Black President of the US (‘Oh! How things have moved on’, they were saying), made his inaugural visit to the UK, and made his fine speeches in the Palace of Westminster. He dined with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Michelle Obama, originally from the south side of Chicago but more recently a product of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, had taken a group of school children from a north London secondary School, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, where 90 per cent of the pupils are BME, to Oxford University for an ‘immersion experience’, to show them this hallowed scholarly ground, and to urge them to make this great distinguished institution their aspiration. It was an uplifting sort of week, in many ways, for those interested in questions of colour, race and equality.
