I think Billie was very brave to put her feelings out there in a protest song. It's sad that she had such a troubled life and died so young.

My friend said he feels it's a lot better here for a black person now, than it was whilst he was growing up. He said they just had to put up with racial abuse as children and if you tried to fight back it just made things worse. I expect your school friends just didn't say anything and had to ignore the racism in schools back then, to try to keep the peace.

I saw a positive change when I started teaching in London 33 years ago. There were protocols in place to deal with racist remarks and children who made any remarks were dealt with swiftly. All racism had to be reported. I wonder if this is part of the reason why things are different here now.