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During my PhD, I read the book
Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman,

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and as a section in the book
where basically the main

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kind of thing about the book
is that the racial structures are flipped.

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So you have the Noughts
who are the black population,

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and they are the people that hold
the power in this world of the book.

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And they are perpetrating racism
against the Crosses,

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who are the white population.

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And this section in the book,
basically one of the crosses

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cuts their finger and asks for a plaster

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and one of the Noughts
gives them a plaster

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and the skin color of the plaster is black
skin.

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And I had this moment
where like I had reached adulthood

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and in all that time,
I had never really thought

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about the fact that every single plaster
that I had ever seen

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had been tailored to my own skin color,
to white skin color.

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And I also thought about the fact
that I was studying

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a PhD in ethnic inequality

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and this tiny micro thing in front of me,
as small as a plaster

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was a massive ethnic inequality
right in front of my face.

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And I just thought
that I was just dumbstruck about this

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and I just thought,
this is what people of color

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have to go through every single day in
something as small as a plaster.

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And I think that as white people,

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we have a responsibility to notice
those things and to notice when we are,

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when we're wrong about certain things.

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And I also
it made me look more kind of at myself

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and how I'm ignorant sometimes
to the world around me

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and throughout my whole PhD,
I've been looking out to the world

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and to culture and of the people around
me, but never really considered

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my own ignorance of those things.