Councillor leading review into local racism targeted with hate crime - but vows he won't stop seeking answers
Greatest Hits Radio can reveal the man leading a review into racism across Torbay had to call police after being targeted in a hate crime.
Last updated 9th Oct 2020
Councillor Jermaine Atiya-Alla was sent an abusive racist message by someone who opposed the review - and they were later spoken to by officers.
Police treated what happened as a 'hate incident' and the person was told to have no further contact with the councillor and sending any further messages could be deemed harassment.
Jermaine is the first and only black councillor to be elected in Torbay, securing a seat in 2019 for Ellacombe, and has been speaking to us as part of October's Black History Month.
He's currently chairing a review which is looking at what can be done to improve the lives of people from minority backgrounds in the area.
He said: "The prejudice that I have found is some people may not speak to you because of your colour.
"There is casual racism and people who might call people racist names - but don't actually realise the effect it has on people.
"I'm fairly thick skinned so I'm able to deal with it.
I remember going to secondary school, maybe 20 odd years ago in 1997. There was name calling there or people would act a little bit violent towards you because they don't like blacks.
"There needs to be more education, more needs to be done in schools in terms of teaching people about racism - or the effects racism has.
"I had someone who wrote to me, they were a local teacher in a school. They were telling me about a story where they had to exclude a six year old child for basically saying racist words - which they learnt from their parents."
Jermaine believes some parts of Torbay are still just as racist as 20 years ago and a young person growing up now would still likely suffer the same levels of discrimination as he did two decades ago.
He said: "I spotted a post on a local social networking, social media page the other week.
"It basically had a group of people in a dinghy off Torbay. Straight away within five minutes, it was interesting to see, most of the respondents were that they're illegal immigrants and get the police down there.
"It was immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration.
"It turns out in the end the people that were in the dinghy were locals."
For more about the 'How do we make Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Lives Matter in Torbay?' review panel's next meeting on Thursday October 15 click here
The session will be a chance to question the Interim Chief Executive, Head of HR and Assistant Director of Community and Customer Services of Torbay Council.
Further interview sessions are being planned in the coming months.
For more about Jermaine's work click here