Black history is integral to Welsh history. There are aspects to celebrate, such as the translations of the slave narratives of John Marrant, Moses Roper and Josiah Henson into Welsh in the nineteenth century, which fired the radical abolitionist zeal of the Welsh; the connections with Paul Robeson, who argued that he witnessed the unity of working people of all races in Wales; and the myriad examples of black contributions to our contemporary history and culture. There is also, of course, the history of racism: the 1919 riots that devastated Cardiff; the popularity of blackface minstrelsy in Welsh carnivals and on British tv, long after those racist practices had ceased in the US; and the contemporary examples of racism in our society. As the Iraqi-born, Cardiff-based artist, Rabab Ghazoul, has said, Wales as internal colony and contributor to colonialism has,

'the capacity for both radical empathy and radical responsibility.'

That responsibility is foregrounded by the fact that last week was national week for hate crime awareness.