'Child Q is right to sue school and police but we must crush racist culture for our kids'

This weekend’s outpouring of ­emotion has been just the tip of the ­iceberg.

On Thursday night, the protests began over Child Q – the black teenager scandalously strip-searched by police while menstruating at her school in Hackney, East London.

The anger continued on Saturday and Sunday as thousands of adults and kids of all races and faiths voiced their contempt. More protests are planned in and outside the borough.

Absolutely right too. Child Q’s private parts were exposed during the search. She was asked to bend over and cough by police who dragged her out of an exam because a teacher wrongly suspected her of carrying drugs.

At her school hundreds of pupils went on strike last week, refusing to attend lessons and staging sit-ins. Teenagers at other schools in Hackney are preparing similar acts of defiance this week.

They don’t feel safe. They don’t feel protected. How can they when – as the report into the scandal confirms – teachers leave the room and give officers carte blanche instead of acting in loco parentis?

Who acts as the chaperone or the witness for Child Q’s defence? Who is there to tell the officers they are crossing the line?

And where, still, is the condemnation from Home Secretary Priti Patel or her boss, Boris Johnson?

I’d have gone ballistic if Child Q had been my daughter. What breaks my heart as a dad is that so many of us parents have long since made our girls (and sons) aware of their rights so that no teacher or police officer could ever try to violate them in that way.

Because the truth is that this kind of outrage tends to happen more if you are black. The official report concludes as much on top of what we know already. But this weekend’s fightback is a line in the sand. A move towards real solutions – in Hackney and beyond.

More black parents and guardians are signing up to become school governors. Kids are educating themselves on the legal boundaries for teachers and police.

Because with a teacher wife I am obviously supportive of the profession but some are entitled. Patronising towards parents and simply unwilling to listen to black children.

Teenagers are using their voices to ensure they are not left as abandoned and traumatised as Child Q was in the room of that Hackney school. We’ve reached a watershed moment.

Now the police have to be removed from our places of education. Especially the schools comprising pupils from poorer backgrounds and ethnic minorities.

Once called upon, the report says, four officers arrived. You can see why Child Q would have been intimidated into complying with their demands.

Much as the police and teachers might like to claim otherwise, the numbers suggest black children are racially discriminated against from an early age.

A report from the Georgetown Law Centre on Poverty and Inequality, in Washington, D.C, US, found that adults saw black girls “as less inno­cent and more adult-like than white girls of the same age, espe­cial­ly between five-14 years old”.

As such, they are presumed guilty when accused and treated more harshly by authority figures.

And, surprise, surprise, black Caribbean students in our schools are excluded up to six times more than their white counterparts.

Child Q has further exposed a crisis in our education system. Like you or I would, she is rightly suing the living daylights out of the school and police. But for our kids to be protected the culture has to be crushed.