Malorie Blackman

And she looked at me and said, well, black people don't become teachers.

She said, why don't you be a secretary instead?

And and I looked and I thought, I don't want to be a secretary.

I mean, no offense to secretaries, but that's not what I wanted to do.

But her thing was, well, black people don't become teachers.

Why don't you be a secretary?

And then and then she said, well, I'm not going to give you a reference to go to university.

And then and then she in the end, she said, well, why don't you do business studies?

Because when I remember.

when she said that i was so upset and she could see my face and then she said and i don't think you're going to get your english a level anyway and i've never failed an english exam in my life thank you very much and then when she and so she said um she said i will give you a reference to do business studies but you're not going to university that's not for the likes of you and um and i was so upset and i remember thinking when she said um

you know that i wasn't going to pass my english a level anyway and and i thought well i'll show you you old cow excuse my fringe and i thought and if anything it actually made me work harder because i thought i am not yeah in this exam yeah some it's unbelievable and you think you know uh that we've progressed in some way but this book was published over 20 years ago i mean it's

Well, that's an interesting question.

I think people have become, I hate to use this word, but I think people have become less tolerant.

But I always thought, I feel I deserve to be more than tolerated.

Um, and, and, and so I, but I do feel there's been, there's been the people like Trump and so on that I think they have actively used people's fear as a way to divide people.

And I, and it just seems that, you know, then we've had, we had Brexit and so forth and then the whole, um,

All the talk about somehow immigrants are our enemies and people fleeing from persecution and conflicts around the world are somehow our enemy.

And that's how we should view them.

And I just find that... I find it so sad that that's where we are.

And I kind of feel...