Alek

This is Alek. 

She sits on a bench outside the school she went to as a girl, admiring the posters of girls in school productions renewed every year. It is here at this school that she has the first memories of racial barriers she would be facing all her life. 

Day after day, Alek would rehearse for school-play auditions, going over lines and delivery so thoroughly they appeared in her dreams. She knew she was better than the next girl. But she was black, her skin a rich ochre, and invariably, a girl with a pale complexion would be picked over Alek for the role she dreamed of landing. This unfairness would make her furious, and would stalk her throughout her life. Just last year was she given a harsher sentence for a non-violent offence than that a white woman – let alone a white man – would have received.

On top of the gender inequality Alek has faced in the criminal justice system, then, she has been double disadvantaged by racism. This must be stamped out whether in schools, the workplace, or criminal justice system.