![]() ![]() When he gives workshops in schools today, does Akala get the impression things are better for working class BAME children than they were 30 years ago? “I asked why and they said: ‘Gang members drive cars like yours.’ But gang members don’t have money and I’m not even the right age to be a gang member.” “I was stopped by the police recently,” he says. I had this armoury that could pick up on it and nip it in the bud and keep me in school.” Fortunately, my mum was already sending me to Pan-African society on Saturdays, so I’d learned to be prepared for this kind of discrimination. “But I was put in a special needs group because of a teacher who thought I was too bright for a working class brown boy. “I was one of the smartest kids in the class,” he says. Near the beginning of Natives, he describes how, when he was growing up in north London as a mixed race child (his father is Jamaican and his white mother is Scottish), some of his teachers resented his intelligence and tried to stop him from fulfilling his potential. Akala believes that education is the best way to empower young black people. ![]()
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