NOBODY COULD have predicted the chaotic, distressing and disorientating events of this year.

The global disruption caused by the COVID pandemic has impacted almost every aspect of our lives and forced us to look afresh at the world we live in.

It has laid bare the inequality that exists in our society and shone a spotlight on another virus that has been infecting our communities for too long. Racism has been a blight on our society for generations, centuries even.

Anti-Black racism

But this year has exposed the particular scourge of anti-Blackness and the gross injustices Black people from every background and walk of life, continue to face.

One of the most moving conversations I had this summer was with my friend, British Vogue editor, Edward Enninful. We discussed the impact of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement shortly after he had written – with searing honesty – about his own experiences of racism.

A few weeks later, as he entered Vogue’s offices, Edward was instructed by a security guard to use the loading bay. Even as a Black man of considerable privilege and prominence, living in a city as cosmopolitan as London and in a workplace where his name was effectively above the door, Edward was reminded that to some, the colour of his skin spoke for him.

From cradle to grave

Countless studies have shown that the marginalisation of Black people begins early in life.

An Arts Council report revealed that in 2017 just one per cent of children’s books featured a Black, Asian or minority ethnic protagonist – a damning statistic when we consider Britain’s diversity and how much representation matters.

We know young Black boys are overrepresented in the care system yet least likely to be adopted, while in schools Black pupils regularly exceed their predicted grades even while navigating a curriculum that offers one-dimensional perspectives on Black contributions to history.

This is why I have partnered with The Black Curriculum to help refresh elements of City Hall’s London curriculum and provide future generations with a more complete perspective on our shared past.

From the first days of the COVID outbreak it was clear that those dying were disproportionately from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

These were groups more likely to be working in frontline roles, serving in health and social care settings, employed on transport networks or in the service industries – all public-facing, potentially high-exposure roles.

Institutional racism

Yet as the virus spread across the nation, it became clear that exposure was just one factor.

The structural inequalities which afflict Black communities – from overcrowding in homes and low pay, to increased exposure to air pollution and health inequalities resulting in diabetes and asthma – were playing out in a lethal way.

Your ethnicity should never mean the difference between life and death yet a recent City Hall report showed socio-economic factors mean Black men and women are almost twice as likely as White men and women to die from COVID.

The disparity is almost as stark for those from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds.

We as a society can and must do better. 

London mayor Sadiq Khan

That is why I’ve ensured that staff across the Greater London Authority family whose risk of contracting COVID may be higher, have access to COVID specific occupational risk assessments.

It is also why I’m pleased the Government finally responded to my call to record ethnicity on death certificates.

Anti-racist organisations

I am proud City Hall is now a proactively anti-racist organisation. I want us to lead by example by being truly representative of the capital’s ethnic diversity at all levels, including in senior leadership and I have committed to working towards this.

There is still work to be done in every sector from health and education to policing and justice and that is why I launched the Workforce Integration Network toolkit.

If hatred and division are the virus – compassion and unity must be the cure. 

London mayor Sadiq Khan

The resource was designed to help businesses diversify and become genuinely inclusive while improving access to employment for young Black men – a group disproportionately likely to be out of work.

I truly believe that we as a society can and must do better. 

We have come a long way from the days when I was racially abused from the terraces, and my older brothers were chased from football matches by members of the National Front, yet this year has proved we have so much further to go.

We have to rise to this moment and make it all of our responsibility to purge racism from our society once and for all, because if hatred and division are the virus – compassion and unity must be the cure.