Stories Seldom Told

"What happened to me is that because of unconscious bias, I was stolen from my mother, I was stolen from my family. I was brought up in institutions, with foster parents who I believe, had a lot of unconscious biases towards people of colour." Google the name “Lemn Sissay” and all the returning hits will be about him, because there is only one Lemn Sissay in the world. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nomin...

"I was injured in 2011 while working in Afghanistan. I stepped on a landmine and lost my legs and my arm. I was 39 years old when that happened. And I went from being a white, privileged, middle class English man who travelled the world who had a very privileged position( and I was aware of that) to somebody who's living with a very serious disability. And it was interesting because I suddenly saw...

"I was at an international conference and had a very interesting conversation with one of the speakers who had walked up to my table. But when I met him outside at the end of the conference,  he was shocked with disbelief on his face when he saw me walking with a caliper because he had no idea that I had a disability." Neena Bhandari has been a career journalist for over three decades. She ha...

"The minute I would do the role of an educated woman, an affluent person, I will immediately be told either by the director or the camera person or the makeup person that I know you don't like to lighten your skin. But just for this, could you, because this is an educated open character." Nandita Das is an actor and director who has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. Na...

"I accepted transgender people, but in my head, and this was something that I wouldn't say to anyone, I sort of thought, oh, isn't that weak to change your body like, shouldn't you accept your own body?" AJ Juer is a transgender guy living in New Zealand. He's currently based in Christchurch, where he studied at the National Academy of singing and Dramatic Art. AJ has a degree in performing arts,...

"And one thing about our culture that makes it a little challenging for us when we come abroad and places like the UK and the US, some of the biases and the discrimination goes straight over our heads, because we're not accustomed to it." Cheryl Hernandez is an executive trainer, life coach, author and international  speaker from Trinidad & Tobago who has spent over 40 years helping...

"The colour of my skin marked me out as it didn't matter whether I was an immigrant or from immigrant heritage, it was the colour of my skin that they saw and attacked, which is why I wrote an album called Beyond skin rather than beyond heritage or beyond anything else. " "It was actually the fact that your skin colour will be the first thing that people encounter or will see." Nitin Sawhney is a...

"We're all human beings you know, let's just get on. And I think that's where I kind of say brush it off, but able to keep going." Brendan Gilbert is a born and bred Londoner of West Indian Heritage, who runs a security systems company based in South London. www.bdgsecurity.co.uk

In part two, Anthony Loyd speaks of his experience discovering Shamima Begum in a refugee camp in Syria. “The worst moment for me was of realising how much the focus of rage – for conscious and unconscious bias – that she became to this society.”

Times war correspondent, Anthony Loyd, shares his stories of unconscious bias in regions of conflict, “I'm speaking as someone who is full of prejudice, because I'm neither dead nor a rock. ”

“I feel when an Indian girl gets married. She doesn't become a wife. She thinks she should become a mother to the man.” “I always felt small in my bigness.” "I can spend the rest of my life hating my body and I have nothing to show for it. Or I embrace myself, because no one else is going to if I don't." Vidya Balan is a multiple award-winning Bollywood actor who has pioneered a change in the conc...