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I think until Britain acknowledges just how much of a presence black people had here before the Sixties, then there are certain stories that are not going to be inclusive of what I have to offer.

Most of the people that I learned and experienced jazz with have been with foreign white people, mostly from France. Excluding my family.

I was raised in a mostly white neighborhood. I was this little white girl jamming out to Ella Fitzgerald and Bobby Brown.

In Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool there are white gangs that share the same backgrounds - they come from broken homes, completely dysfunctional, mums for the most part unable to cope, the fathers of these kids completely not in the scene.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.

Too many whites still see blacks as a group apart.

I never ceased to be surprised when southern whites, at their homes or clubs, told racial jokes and spoke so derogatorily of blacks while longtime servants, for whom they quite clearly had some affection, were well within earshot.