JC
Anthony Walker was bludgeoned to death last week. What were the circumstances? This black teenager was merely sitting on a bench with his white girlfriend. Apparently this was enough to enrage his killer. In the wake of this horrible hate crime, two people contemplate Britain’s handling of interracial relationships in The Guardian. It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between the UK and the US (e.g. their recent Census change happened around the same time as ours, but with a different result). Looks like both countries are also guilty of saying, “Oh! Things are improving!” while the reality paints quite a different picture. Yes, we can have larger numbers of mixed people, couples and families, but how are they being *treated*? That is the real measure.

Britain has the highest level of mixed-race relationships in the developed world. According to the 2001 Census of England and Wales, there were 219,000 marriages between people from different ethnic minority backgrounds - a figure that obviously massively understates the extent of romantic and sexual relationships between people of different races. A study by the Policy Studies Institute estimated that in 1997 half of black men and one-third of black women in relationships had a white partner, and that those proportions may well have increased since. For a country that flatters itself on its tolerance and its ability to adapt itself to a changing ethnic minority makeup, these are heartening figures.

And the products of all these multi-coloured relationships are changing the complexion of modern Britain. The number of mixed-race people grew by more than 75% during the 1990s to around 415,000, 10% of the total ethnic minority population. (Incidentally, it was in the 2001 Census that the mixed-race category was created, partly in response to a long campaign by those opposed to having to tick the box marked “other”.)

Some hope to explain Anthony Walker’s murder in part by blaming it on Liverpool, a city that has a singular and troubled history of race relations, from its historic role in the slave trade to today, where most black Liverpudlians live in Toxteth, a district described by some as a ghetto. “In Liverpool, I don’t think racism has changed one iota,” says Ken Richards, 60, of the Liverpool 8 Law Centre, an advice centre for the Toxteth area. “When I was a youth I remember that if you wanted to travel outside Liverpool 8, you would need 20 to 30 mates or you would be in for a kicking.”

But maybe what happened in Liverpool on Friday could have happened anywhere. Anthony Clarke, the law centre’s coordinator, says: “Liverpool is no different from any British city where there is a large black community. The thing is that racism is fairly constant. I don’t think it’s disappeared. But what happened on Friday has shocked us all. It’s difficult to get your head round it.”