I quickly learnt that people of colour have to be more well spoken, more well qualified – a bit extra, well, everything

Growing up in the 1980s, I was surrounded by racism, says Konnie Huq. Can Black Lives Matter finally rid our society of its hidden prejudices?

Black Lives Matter campaigners protest in Washington DC (AP)

The tragic, senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd, and the subsequent rise to prominence of the Black Lives Matter campaign, has led to a resurgence of some amazing books and writers in the UK book charts. Bernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge have become the first black British women to top the UK’s fiction and nonfiction paperback charts respectively, and very deservedly so.

Books are so important in education and the progress within a society that it seems mad that this is what it took to achieve that. Instead of widespread racism triggering the need to read more broadly and improve education, the latter should have come first. The cause and effect is the wrong way round.

In a week in which a plane bearing the banner “White Lives Matter Burnley” was flown over the Etihad Stadium before a major football match, it seems we have a long way still to go.