“Mum, who’s your favourite F1 driver?”

“Lewis Hamilton.”

My nine-year-old son paused, before fixing me with a bemused expression.

“Is it because he’s black?”

“Yeah,” I said without hesitation, because this is a conversation we’ve had before.

A week or two earlier, he was researching the stats of football players and had asked me to name random players that he could look up.

“Saka…Bellingham…Sterling…Rashford…Vini Junior…Mbappé…Kanté…” I began, listing every player I could think of.

“You only know the black players,” he said, half statement, half question. 

“They’re the ones I pay attention to,” I answered, before we got into a long conversation about why.