To the Editor:

If the selectors of this artwork wanted to use it as a litmus test for British attitudes to race and Black womanhood, they have succeeded.

All of the racists — and more — have emerged out of the floorboards.

I read Rupert Lowe's appalling response, with its very clear fascist echoes. I also read Prof Gus's response. And I had to ask myself why I also initially felt uncomfortable about the statue.

My first thought was: why couldn't it have been less "caricature", less "Jessica Rabbit", more real? An image of a regal African woman, who stood as a metonym for Mother Africa, the cradle of civilisation?

And I hate this colour blue.

After a restless night, I've woken up with the following conclusion.

The statue is incredibly provocative — it's meant to be.

To my mind, it deliberately draws on old tropes of Black womanhood, but with a very important twist.

I felt uncomfortable because, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, it reminded me of Mammy Two Shoes from Tom and Jerry. She was the woman in blue who was fat and mostly faceless — a caricature from the era of American slavery.

At school, my closest friends loved me for being their "Black Mammy".

Bizarrely, I hadn't realised that until a few years ago, when I bumped into an old school "friend", who said: "You know, we always loved you. You were our Black Mammy."

Needless to say, I set fire to that friend.

More significantly, that cartoon character had always sat uncomfortably with me. So when Jeffrey Archer made his comments in 1999 about Black women, while running for London Mayor, they simply added to my ambivalent sense of self.

According to him, a person's head would "not turn in the road if a black woman passed you because they were badly dressed, they were probably overweight and they probably had a lousy job".

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Those words stuck.

I had seen the abuse my beautiful mother went through. When we lived in Cambridge, between 1995 and 1998, children would frequently run around my mother shouting: "Monkey, monkey, monkey."

No doubt we've all had these experiences.

So when I first saw the statue, all those emotions came running back to me.

BUT — and it's a very important but — this Black woman in blue isn't faceless.

She's striding confidently and proudly into the future despite the racist tropes that float around her like flotsam.

Everyone is looking at her, whether they like it or not.

She is like Jessica Rabbit — also full of sex appeal.

And yes, we live in a racist country.

So this is a really important reminder to carry on walking forward into the future with our heads held high.

Meantime, people like Rupert Lowe will be forced to look at the confident, sexy woman in blue sitting atop the Fourth Plinth for the next two years.

And Restore's campaign for London Mayor, based on tearing down "this filth", can go screw itself.

The statue will be standing for two years but removed before the election of the next Mayor of London.

Absolute genius!

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And in any case, his campaign is bound to be as unsuccessful as Jeffrey Archer's.

Having felt sad that the sculpture wasn't more regal, I now realise that the artist has deliberately selected the colour blue.

More accurately, it is lapis lazuli — a historically significant colour because it was ground into ultramarine and was one of the most expensive and prized blue pigments in the ancient world.

Moreover, it serves as a universal symbol of royalty, dignity and power.

The statue is thus also a reminder to stop shooting from the hip and to spend time in reflection and thought.

If only we could stop jumping to conclusions and making judgements about people based on fleeting knowledge.

The woman in blue made me uncomfortable when I first saw her.

After taking the time to think about why, I now realise that perhaps she was meant to.