My dad was a proper old English gentleman, even though he was from the Caribbean. He used to stand up and salute during the Queen's Christmas speech.

Normally when you look at the Ballon d'Or winners, they're either attacking midfield players or centre-forwards. They are goalscorers and eye-catching players.

The truth is that those at the top of British football do not care about getting rid of racism, they just don't want to hear it or see it.

I'm a big believer in fate.

How many black people are there in the higher echelons of any industry? We can talk about journalism, we can talk about politics. So why should football be any different?

Once you have players you like and a good enough squad there's no need to spend money.

While we have to take personal responsibility for our actions, I have a great deal of empathy for people who are unconsciously racially biased, and indeed count myself among their number.

The only fight worth fighting is to give all children equal opportunities regardless of race or gender, to judge individuals on their qualities and not their backgrounds. The victory won't come when nobody feels able to voice racist abuse, but when nobody thinks of doing so in the first place.

Societies go backwards sometimes.

I give balanced, constructive views and what happens is that bits and pieces of what I say are used against me.

I remember when I was 13 or 14 friends coming over and my father telling them the benefits of joining the army. But he knew that army life wasn't for me. I was a little bit too laid back and lackadaisical and ill-disciplined.

In the 1970s you would have had lots of black goalkeepers and defensive midfield players but never made it professionally because the perception was, 'You don't think too much, you can't play in positions of responsibility so you play on the wing or up front.' Lots were lost to the game because of the perception.

Talking about what any one section of our society has to do to combat racism just stops people outside that group asking difficult questions of themselves. We keep looking at symptoms and not treating the cause.

My mother, Jeanne, was a TV and radio presenter in Jamaica. Bob Marley used to appear on her shows all the time and so she knew him quite well.

Race, for me, should be social and cultural, rather than the colour of your skin. Anton Ferdinand would have more in common with John Terry than he does with some West African from Nigeria. John Terry will have more in common with Anton Ferdinand than a Slav from Eastern Europe who happens to be white.

For a team like Brighton, just being in the Premier League is important. That is the name of the game.

Why should racism go away when we are not tackling it in the right way? We are influenced by what we see in the world and what we see in the world is certain people being considered more worthy than others - and we continue to see that.

I'm quite unfit. It's the motivation that's the problem, I need a goal. When I was a professional footballer I trained every day because I had to.

Before we are footballers or fans, we are ordinary members of society. We are doctors, lawyers, milkmen, postmen, unemployed people, students... So why are they called racist football fans? Are they just racist for the 90 minutes of a match, when the other six days a week they're not?

People have been taught not just to have a negative perception of black people, but to have a belief in the superiority of white people. Their behaviour is the result of centuries of indoctrination.

History shows that black people have been second-class citizens, less than human. That's what had to happen with slavery. You had to dehumanise a person, to say, 'He is not like us. He is used to hard work in the sun. He can handle being whipped because he doesn't feel any pain. He doesn't need to be educated.'

There are so many intelligent former black players, guys like Luther Blissett and Cyrille Regis, who never got a chance to become a top manager or a top coach because of the perception that surrounds people who look like them. They are black - which, for many, means they are good athletes but incapable of being anything above and beyond that.

We have to deconstruct the idea of racial superiority. We have had it for hundreds of years so it is not going to happen overnight but we have to tackle it in the right way.

I felt I had to take the Celtic opportunity. You quickly learn that any managerial vacancy attracts up to 60 or 70 applicants, so you need a good reason to turn a job down. A start is a start.