Black West Indian boys still don’t matter according to the government — and other things I’ve learnt yet already knew since reading Stuart Hall Foundation’s latest review.

The other week 3rd February was Stuart Hall’s birthday. Hall is known as one of the great thinkers of a go-to reference for anyone (with sense, and er, isn’t racist) writing about social justice in the UK, and is known for coining the term ‘Thatcherism’. Those of you who don’t know them, or are not from the UK should get to know.

This report is an evaluation of the past 40 years of recommendations from both on structural inequalities toward Black, Asian and other minoritised community groups in the UK. The review exhibits 589 different recommendations made by 13 previous race and inequality reports and commissions between 1981 and 2017.

As a policy researcher and sometime advisor myself, I’d like to think those at the top value our hours of interviewing, engaging with participants and shared vulnerable moments with large numbers of those minorities they fund us to investigate. This sense of hope I cling on to, especially now as I’m undertaking research into generation-z in London this year.

I’m saddened when I look back and think about the great recommendations that were left behind. For example concerns around the attainment of Black West Indians in schools. It was noted in The Rampton Report, that was in 1981. We’re in 2021 and we know young Black boys are still…