Growing up in West London in the mid-nineties and then through the long New Labour years, I rarely heard anyone talk about race beyond stock phrases to do with “multiculturalism” and the need for “integration” that sometimes made it onto the Nine O’Clock News. And though I may have guessed that it was people like me and my mum they were talking about, I pushed the thought aside out of embarrassment.

Then in 1993, a teenager named Stephen Lawrence was killed while waiting for a bus in Eltham, South London. He was with his friend Duwayne Brooks when a group of five white men ran toward them. “What, what, nigger?” shouted one, while another took out a blade. Duwayne saw a flash of metal and thought it was a steel bar. He started to run and called for his friend to follow, but Stephen was bleeding badly. He ran for just over one hundred yards before collapsing by the side of the road.

Despite tip-offs from local residents and clear evidence pointing to the identities of the suspects—who were previously involved in other knife attacks in the area—the Metropolitan Police refused to act. Leads weren’t followed up on and evidence was lost. Duwayne, traumatized, was treated as a suspect and accused of stealing soft drinks during one visit to the police station.⁴

The police’s mishandling of the case brought back memories of the 1980s: of stabbings uninvestigated; the indiscriminate use of stop and search; the shooting of Cherry Groce, paralyzed in front of her eleven-year-old son, which led to the first of the 1985 Brixton riots; the death of Cynthia Jarrett, who suffered heart failure when her home was raided by police. No police officers were held accountable, and no apologies were issued.

Stephen Lawrence’s killers were eventually arrested, only to walk free a few months later. Then in 1995, twenty-six-year-old Wayne Douglas died in police custody and riots broke out in Brixton again.

None of this had an obvious impact on me. I remember Stephen Lawrence’s face on the news and splashed across front pages, cutting through in a way the murders of other young people of color hadn’t—maybe because he was so manifestly bright and innocent. The same smiling photograph of him accompanied most news reports, but in my memory it has no context. My parents, if it came up, would only say tragic and shake their heads. They never talked about race. Instead, my dad said I should never trust anyone and my mum told me not to look strangers in the eyes.