Hey, Lenny Henry: "Racism" Doesn't Explain Genetic Differences!

When I was 7, in the third year of Infants’ School, our teacher, Mrs Rusby, had an idea which she thought would make Art particularly interesting for us. We were all to draw our favourite person from off the television. Everybody else in the class, including the 6 or so South Asian kids, drew somebody white – Jimmy Savile, Timmy Mallet, Michaela Strachan, such that there was a shortage of pink pencils and people had to colour in other parts of their celebrities’ body while they waited their turn. I had no such problem. I knew who I wanted to draw straight away and I needed a brown pencil for his skin: it was Lenny Henry.