My mom was from Sparkhill. My Grandad continued to live there until his death and I also used to visit friends there and never experienced any hassle or trouble.
I lived for a few years around the Lozells/Newtown area and much of the racial tension there was between the black & Asian population, and within the Asian population between Muslims & Sikh youths. The 'grown ups' were all very friendly to each other.
I am white and I have encountered abuse towards me. On the one occasion I was crossing the road by way of a subway doing nothing other than heading to the chip shop. A black man was coming the other way. As he passed me he called me a 'Honkey ***ch wh**re'. I had never seen this person before and had done nothing to provoke this. It was very very random
I had the great experience of growing up 'exposed', as it were, to many different cultures. The house next to us was owned by Solihull hospital and we had doctors living there - some for a short time, some for a few years at a time (the short stays were usually doctors doing an 'exchange' stint or getting some experience of the UK system to take back home with them. We never had British neighbours. There were Indians, Sri Lankans, Australians, South Africans, Lebanese, Israelis, Egyptians, oh and we were friendly with another Doctor & his family who were originally from Peru. All the kids would play together and my Mom used to learn their cookery techniques so we had a rather varied diet too
It was all great fun.
As you say in your post Phil, we are all essentially the same. We have the same needs & wants and all religions teach tolerance & kindness so I really don't get how things can get that bad that people can just dismiss someone else because of the colour of their skin or their belief system. It completely baffles me.
My Dad's side of the family are, in part, from Alum Rock. So Ward End for him was pretty much his Mom's 'home patch'. It makes it seem even more sad to me that he had such trouble there.