The Playing Field Was Never Level

A collaboration with Newton Thompson on race, allyship and the everyday work of inclusion

This piece was originally written in 2020, in the days following the murder of George Floyd. I have revisited it in 2026 because while some of the language and conversations around race have moved on, the experiences Newton shared with me, and the responsibility they place on all of us, remain deeply relevant.

In 2020, I watched the footage of George Floyd. Like millions of people around the world, I was horrified. But I was also conscious that my horror was not the same as lived experience. As a white woman, racism is something I can learn about, challenge and work to dismantle, but it is not something I experience because of the colour of my skin.

So rather than simply writing about racism, I wanted to listen.

That conversation brought me closer to my friend and colleague, Newton Thompson, and this post became a collaboration between us.

The playing field was never level

I grew up in an area where disadvantage and inequality were visible all around me.

I attended an inner-city school in the 1990s. Our playground was sold off to build a car park. We had limited opportunities to study a full breadth of subjects, no PE lessons and practices that would rightly be considered unacceptable today.

My classmates came from many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, white children were the minority. Looking back with the benefit of age and experience, however, I understand something I probably couldn't articulate as a child: we weren't all experiencing the same world in the same way.

Years later, I worked with young people who had been removed from mainstream education in Nottingham, an area experiencing significant levels of violence and deprivation. Many of the young Black people I worked with had already experienced extraordinary levels of disadvantage: instability at home, exclusion from education, poverty, trauma and systems which too often seemed to expect less of them rather than more.

The playing field wasn't level.

It wasn't level when I was a child.

It wasn't level for the young people I later worked with.

And history tells us it was never level in the first place.

That is why conversations about equality cannot stop at treating everybody "the same". If people's starting points, barriers and experiences are different, identical treatment does not automatically create fairness.

But there is a limit to what I can tell you about racism. I can be an ally. I can challenge inequality. I can examine the systems I work within and the assumptions I carry.

What I cannot do is tell you what it feels like to move through Britain as a Black person.

Newton can. And in 2020, he trusted me with his story.

What follows is adapted from the words Newton shared with me then.

Newton's story

I needed to write down my thoughts to process the senseless and brutal murder of George Floyd.

I felt sadness, pain, despair and anger.

And I wanted people who don't share the same complexion as me to understand something important: racism isn't simply an American issue.

It exists here in Britain too.

I was born here. My mother was born here. My grandmother was born here.

Three generations of my family were born and raised in Britain. My ancestry can be traced to Sierra Leone and Jamaica on my mother's side and Jamaica on my father's.

And yet throughout my life I've heard comments like:

"If you don't like living in Britain, why don't you go back to where you came from?"

Where exactly would that be?

I've been aware of the colour of my skin for as long as I can remember because other people made me aware of it.

One of my earliest memories is walking along Market Street in Manchester in the early 1980s and hearing racist abuse from a National Front march. I was with my father and uncles, who picked me up and ran to get us away.

Incidents like that stay with you.

So do the comments from people you grew up with.

People you considered friends using racist language and then saying:

"We're only joking. We don't mean you. You're alright."

As though somehow excluding me from the insult made the racism acceptable.

It didn't.

When the adults don't protect you

Primary school was particularly painful.

I experienced racism from other children, but more disturbingly, sometimes from adults too.

On one school trip, a coach driver walked to the back of the bus, singled me out and called me a racist slur.

A teacher witnessed it.

They didn't challenge him.

Other pupils went home and told their parents what had happened. Those parents were appalled and complained to the school, council and local MP.

That mattered.

Because allyship isn't simply believing racism is wrong.

It's what you do when you see it happening.

I also experienced racist behaviour from a teacher who seemed determined to make life difficult for Black pupils. Eventually the situation became so serious that my father confronted him over the racist language he had used towards us.

These experiences taught me something very early: the people and institutions that are supposed to protect you don't always do so.

Racism doesn't stay in the playground

My first football match with my dad, uncle and their friends was Manchester United against West Bromwich Albion.

West Brom had a brilliant generation of Black players, including Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham.

But one of my lasting memories isn't the football.

It's the monkey chants and racist abuse directed towards Black players.

Decades later, Black footballers are still subjected to racist abuse.

And outside football, the experiences continued.

As a young man trying to get home after a night out in Manchester, taxis sometimes wouldn't stop for me. A white friend would have to flag one down instead.

During my teens and twenties I was stopped by police more times than I can count.

On one occasion, I returned from university and was putting my key into the door of my father's house when four police officers stopped me and accused me of trying to burgle it.

Our next-door neighbour—a local councillor—told them I lived there.

They didn't believe him.

Eventually he went into the house using his spare key and showed them a photograph of me.

Twenty minutes later, the same officers stopped my father as he walked home from work carrying his tool bag.

I've been strip-searched on suspicion of being a drug dealer.

I've even been stopped and accused of trespassing while walking to basketball training at Greater Manchester Police's own training centre. My coach witnessed what happened and was able to intervene.

These aren't stories I read somewhere.

They happened to me.

And then there are the everyday things

Some experiences are dramatic.

Others are smaller, repeated moments that accumulate over a lifetime.

Being asked for drugs in clubs, pubs, bars and festivals.

Being followed around shops by security.

People asking to touch my hair.

Racist language written in school textbooks.

Being asked whether I'm lost or what I'm doing somewhere.

Being refused entry to clubs and bars.

Walking into meetings and having people assume I'm the most junior person in the room.

People making assumptions about where I live.

Women holding their bags more tightly when I enter a lift.

And constantly having to think about how I speak, move or respond so I won't be perceived as aggressive or threatening.

One incident can be dismissed.

A lifetime of them cannot.

Perhaps most painfully, I've watched my own children experience racism too.

That's when you realise this isn't simply something belonging to your childhood or to another generation.

The pattern continues.

Inclusion has to mean more than words

One of the things that frustrates me most is seeing support for racial equality appear when racism becomes headline news, only to disappear again when attention moves elsewhere.

Real inclusion can't be seasonal.

It can't be a social media post, a statement from an organisation or a campaign that lasts for a month.

It has to show up in decisions.

In recruitment.

In education.

In promotion.

In leadership.

In who gets listened to.

In who gets believed.

In whose potential we recognise.

And in what happens when somebody witnesses discrimination and has a choice between saying something and staying silent.

Six years later...

When Newton and I first wrote this in 2020, the world was having an enormous conversation about race. Re-reading his words in 2026, what strikes me most isn't simply the individual incidents. It's the accumulation.

A school.

A football ground.

A taxi.

A shop.

A workplace.

A police encounter.

A meeting room.

Each experience might be explained away in isolation. Together, they tell us something about systems, expectations and who is automatically afforded belonging.

That matters enormously in the workplace.

Because inclusion isn't just about whether an organisation has the right policy.

It's about the thousands of tiny interactions through which people learn whether they are valued, trusted, listened to and expected to succeed. And this is where allyship becomes practical. It means noticing who gets interrupted. Questioning whose potential we instinctively recognise. Looking at who progresses, and who doesn't. Being curious about patterns in our data rather than explaining them away. Challenging inappropriate comments even when the person affected isn't in the room. Listening when somebody tells us their experience differs from ours. And perhaps most importantly, accepting that we don't have to personally experience an inequality to believe that it exists.

I cannot know what it is like to walk through the world in Newton's skin.

But I can listen.

I can believe him.

I can examine my own assumptions.

I can challenge systems that create unequal outcomes.

And I can use whatever influence I have to make the playing field a little more level for the people coming behind us.

That was the lesson I took from our conversation in 2020.

It remains the lesson I take from it today.

Look inward. Stay curious. Speak up.

Don't be afraid to ask when you don't understand.

Don't stand silently beside discrimination because it isn't happening to you.

And don't mistake the absence of deliberate prejudice for the presence of inclusion.

Creating a fairer world and fairer workplaces, requires more from us than simply not being racist.

With thanks to Newton Thompson for trusting me with his experiences, both when we first wrote this piece in 2020 and in allowing his story to sit at the heart of this conversation.