Description:Michael Hastings, Head of Public Affairs, BBC: "I think the emphasis on black history, black identity, is overplayed. The priority is to realise that certain educational and personal skills are far more important than background and culture. If you can't read and write, if you don't understand the world and you can't articulate what you think, you can have every conceivable chip on your shoulder about being black, but you ain't going nowhere."
Photograph by Robert Taylor. Produced for the book 'Portraits of Black Achievement: composing successful careers' by Jacqui MacDonald.
Robert Taylor is a freelance photographer and artist. His parents came to England from Jamaica in the early 1950s. He was born in Sutton Coldfield in 1958 and spent his childhood there. He came to photography via the RAF, qualifying as a barrister, and five years in publishing. He has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, illustrated several books, and has work in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The caption above is taken from Jacqui MacDonald’s book 'Portraits of Black Achievement: composing successful careers' (Lifetime Careers Ltd, 2001). The book includes extended interviews with 70 black achievers, whose fascinating stories paint a telling picture of what it means to be black in Britain today.
Copies of the book are available for purchase from Lifetime Careers Publishing or The Institute of Education, University of London bookshop (links below).