Its legacy is profound and given us valuable new ways of thinking. We must not waste these insights
When I first joined the legal team working with Neville and Doreen Lawrence, I was struck by a curious aspect of their case. Somehow, in the face of the most extreme racist attack on their son, they had been able to articulate more effectively than anyone before them the subtle, covert racism that so many of us faced. It is what made the case so unusual and why it has resonated so widely. While we continue the pursuit of Stephen's killers, it is equally important not to forget what we learned about the effect of that other form of racism on our everyday lives.
Initially, the horrific murder of Stephen in 1993 and his parents' struggle for justice brought to mind the crude, brutal racism of the US civil rights era such as the Ku Klux Klan Alabama church bombings or Rosa Parks's battle against segregation. The power of watching courageous individuals battling overt racial injustice can be transformative. Our history in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s had seen victims of racism take to the streets and explode with anger.
But in the 1990s, the Lawrences had a different approach. They took their fight through the system and challenged it to give them justice. In doing so – through two failed prosecutions and a highly charged inquest – they showed with tragic clarity how two different forms of racism existed side by side. First, the violent racism of Stephen's killers was always present. But second, Stephen's parents were as critical of the underlying, less direct racism that had caused a delay in the proper investigation of his death. It may even have allowed his killers to escape justice. It was that focus that gave a contemporary and more sophisticated framework to their complaint. It was brave and ground-breaking.
That subtler form of racism is well known to minorities, but had always been so difficult to express. We experience it at the hands of public officials, at school, at work. You have a sense that you are battling against stereotyped preconceptions but cannot shift them. Sometimes, such experiences are because of race; sometimes, they are not, which is what makes it so pernicious.
It is a form of racism that exists in the shadows. We can all be guilty of it and it can occur as much through ignorance and inattention as through deliberate hostility. It took the clarity of the Lawrence family's campaign and the stark realisation that this subtle racism might have protected Stephen's murders for us all to understand it clearly. The ensuing public inquiry reflected those wider implications. In the face of resistance from many public bodies, it embraced the notion of institutional racism. The template for meaningful change was found in 70 recommendations. It led not only to the creation of new criminal offences, but to changes in the law under the Race Relations Act 1976 and a new duty on public authorities to promote racial equality.
In this way, the great legacy of the case is that it forced us to see more crude forms of racism in a wider context. Perhaps this is why it transcended law and even politics, inspiring us all to feel connected with the case. It became part of our culture.
No Woman No Cry, painted by Chris Ofili in 1998 as a tribute to Doreen Lawrence, now hangs in the Tate. David Adjaye, the renowned British architect, designed the Stephen Lawrence Trust building in south-east London. Beverley Knight mourned Stephen in song; Benjamin Zephaniah in verse. In 1999, London's Tricycle theatre turned the transcripts of the inquiry into a successful play. As we approached a new millennium, the Stephen Lawrence case had lodged itself in a nation's consciousness. The positive effect that this new understanding would have on our public lives seemed inevitable, but whether any of Stephen's killers would ever be brought to justice was less clear.
Over a decade later, the reverse is the case. Technological advances eventually provided the crucial evidence that jailed two men for Stephen's murder. But the wider importance of the case – tackling systemic discriminatory practices – has had less success. There have been important developments in the treatment of crime scenes and the victims of crime. However, disproportionate stop and search of young black men, which has always been symbolic of a dysfunctional relationship between the African-Caribbean community and the police, has increased. The recruitment and retention of black and minority ethnic police officers has stalled.
Even the continuing utility of the term "institutional racism" has been questioned. In a 2010 report commissioned by the London mayor, the Metropolitan Police Authority concluded: "The term is used too glibly as a blanket indictment and as such has become a barrier to reform." Whether this is right or not, it appears to take us further from, not nearer to, the compelling analysis and conclusions of the inquiry report.
The problem is that in 2011, while many young people still live in fear of the kind of violent attack that took Stephen's life, there are many millions more who are just as concerned about that different, subtle, "institutional" discrimination. They fear that the place where they wish to study or the organisation in which they want to work will not accept them because their ethnicity, accent, class or sexuality will mean that despite their skills they will simply not "fit in". They worry that public bodies that should be providing them with services will misunderstand them or be intolerant of their specific needs.
The real meaning of the Stephen Lawrence case only becomes clear when we focus not merely on the moment of his death but also on the life that he should have had: what would his future have been as a bright, young, black man in the UK? How easily would he have entered his chosen profession of architecture? How many times would he have been stopped and searched by now? How would it have made him feel?
Even if we are yet to provide the answers, the Stephen Lawrence case gave us new paradigms and a better vocabulary for understanding racism. No sensible person would suggest that racism has been eradicated from public life – far from it – but at the very least we now have better means by which we can all grapple with those complex issues together. In truth, we should be using them more effectively.
Anyone who has been touched by watching the Lawrences' struggle should visit the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. It offers bursaries and training for young students and speaks to Stephen's legacy far beyond the two-dimensional image of him as the victim of a racist attack.
More than anything, it reminds us that the same perseverance and thoroughness that eventually brought two of his killers to justice will need to be applied to overcoming these wider issues. That task, so far, has proved even more difficult, but it is ultimately how our real respect for Stephen's memory will be measured.
Matthew Ryder is a barrister at Matrix Chambers, London, specialising in crime and civil law