Brief 44: The moral leaders of Britain are young black people

I've been thinking this for a while, but it seems timely to say it now. I hope this doesn't seem a fatuous or gratuitous point. 

Apart from the unavoidable Marcus Rashford, I won't be giving a list of names and actions. Suffice to say, I've seen countless examples in the last few years where the most (indeed, only times) I've felt a sense of pride, affection for country, hope and, dare I say it, moral order, has been in the achievements, initiatives and words of young black people.

I think there are various reasons for this. Clearly it is not that they are the only people doing noteworthy good deeds.

There's a reason why it is Rashford, in his early 20s, and 100 year old WW2 veteran Tom Moore, whose stories resonated this year. Moore belongs to the last generation whose actions are entirely accepted and celebrated - the generation below his are broadly despised by their juniors and seen to have abdicated moral responsibility, while mine, the next one down, looks at itself now as not having done enough positive with the knowledge and understanding it has - it looks admiringly and apologetically at its youngers, a generation of activists out of necessity (or else, it collaborates with the one above ... Matt Hancock is younger than me, people like him in charge ...).

And where the British black pioneers of previous years were publicly pilloried as much as they were celebrated, there is, at least now, more of a critical mass that looks for and finds greatness in the actions of Rashford and his peers.

I grew up in a Britain where the black youth was the bogeyman, the demon. At school, on the news, on the sports field. That hasn't changed entirely, let's not kid ourselves, but when the tabloids went after Raheem Sterling, there was far more of a mainstream biteback than there'd have been in the past.

The black youth of Britain are a living contradiction of the myths of empire, yet also the embodiment of a dream that feels a bit like it's died, of a Britain that might have been, that maybe was close, if it had fully accepted its colonial legacy and the glorious impetus of its large immigrant communities.

Look, there's a degree of personal confirmation bias in this. When I attempted my PGCE in 2005, I floundered in my final placement in a school in Peckham with a high proportion of black kids. As much as the truth was simply that I was unsuited to teaching, I felt like I'd failed to get to grips with these children's realities, their identities, their hopes and dreams.

In the following years, I worked from home near Clapham South and would hear and see the kids from St Francis Xavier 6th Form College going into and out of school on week days. And gradually I gained a sense, a belief, that this was the hope and glory of Britain. I know it sounds crass and cliched, but it was all so contrary to the racist stereotypes I knew still flourished across England.

I know there are dangers to this perspective - firstly, that it buys into the myth of the "good immigrant", that young black people need to be of outstanding character, rather than just run-of-the-mill, to be accepted. Secondly, that such a glowing, rose-tinted view ignores the deprivation, prejudice and danger that young black people still face.

All that is true. I can only say that, overwhelmingly, this is where I am taking my lessons about values, kinship, aspiration, nuance and fairness these days. Others exist, but modern Britain is set up, for better or worse, for these lessons to have the greatest impact.