Why universities need to talk to black people about race

If universities are to combat racial inequality in Britain, they should be talking more to the people at the sharp end

I was well into my thirties before I realised that The Sneetches, Dr Seuss's fantastical story of bird-like creatures whose star-bellied variants looked down on the plain-bellied sort, was about racism. I'd known the book all my life - my mother read it to me when I was little. But it was only when started reading The Sneetches to my own children that the penny finally dropped.

When it did, I couldn't figure out why I'd been so dim. After all I'd grown up amid the tense sectarianism of Northern Ireland; and I'd seen plenty of the world, encountering different cultures, histories and ethnicities while working in Europe, America and Asia to forge a career in science. By the time I settled in multicultural London with my young family, I thought I had a good working knowledge of our diverse, fractured societies.