Child Q is not alone

Why we need to keep calling out racism

As the mother of a black teenage girl, the story of Child Q breaks my heart. Child Q could have been my daughter Olivia. Like Child Q, she was 15 years-old in 2020. The thought that she could have been wrongly targeted by racist police officers is anathema to me.

That’s why, like many others, I stand in solidarity with Child Q, her family, those who have been protesting and the multitude of voices across social media bringing attention to the heinous abuse of an innocent young black girl. Suspected by her teachers of having used cannabis, she was taken out of an exam at school and subjected to an invasive strip search while on her period by two female Met police officers in the school’s medical room. A safeguarding review concludes that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search.”

The school has since apologised, and there are calls for the head teacher to resign. The Met Police said the incident was ‘regrettable’ and ‘should never have happened’. But it did. It’s not the first time an innocent black child has encountered racism at the hands of the police and, sadly, it won’t be the last time either. Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbot, where Child Q’s school is located, confirmed that of the 25 strip searches of under-18s in the borough in 2020-21, 23 were black children.

Racist profiling

It’s bad enough when a black adult has to endure such racist profiling. In the introduction to Black in White Community Collection, an anthology of poems about racism that I released last November, I recount an incident that occurred over 20 years ago, when my sister and I were subjected to a police search. We’d had a manicure one Saturday afternoon and afterwards were chatting away while eating burgers and chips in a well-known fast food restaurant in Central London. Suddenly a group of about eight police officers appeared out of nowhere and demanded we go into the ladies toilets so they could search us and our belongings. Why? Another customer’s wallet had been stolen and because we are black and apparently had been queuing near them in a packed restaurant, we were the ‘obvious’ suspects. Needless to say, the police search was fruitless.

Although the experience was unpleasant, unwarranted and completely unjustified, at least we were adults. Child Q is just a teenager, yet was subjected to degrading, disgusting and discriminatory maltreatment that has had a hugely damaging effect on her. As a mother to a teenager of a similar age, I empathise and sincerely hope that Child Q gets all the help she needs to recover and rebuild.

Airing children’s experiences of racism

Racism is real and it’s institutionalised – schools are no exception. Racism is based on ignorant views that are entrenched and persistent. We must work towards becoming an anti-racist society. We need to call out racism wherever it occurs.

Those of us who parent black children are all too familiar with the stories they tell us and some of our own experiences of the racism, microaggressions and unconscious bias that they encounter in schools. Take, for example, the below extract from an email I sent to my son’s school in 2017:

“I understand from my son that a pupil has made some racist and severely violent threats against him and other ethnic minority students. I must admit I am surprised that the school did not to make the parents of the boys who have been threatened aware of this. I understand that the school has involved the police and imposed some sanctions against the boy, but that he is back at school – and the boys he racially abused were told that ‘he needs support’. That’s all very well and good, but more importantly – is the boy receiving instruction on why his views are wrong? … [And] has the school considered that the students who were subject to his threats may also need support?”

The school was very careful not to respond in writing. I received a phone call from one of the senior staff who essentially told me that they couldn’t talk to me for confidentiality reasons; a lame excuse that failed to address my very real concerns. The boy remained in school, seemingly having ‘got away with it’, sending a message to those he’d threatened that they were less valued.