This chapter reviews and describes the experiences of the heterogeneous Black or ethnic minority community (taken to mean residents of non-Caucasian extraction) in Liverpool. It gives a short historical background and overview of the settlement and development of the Black community in Liverpool. It then goes on to evaluate the situation of the city's contemporary Black community, considering its structure and the community's success in its acquisition of employment, housing, education and improved health in relation to the general population.

By way of case study analyses, the chapter will discuss histories of two different ethnic minority communities, the Somali and the Chinese, who have been predominantly resident in and associated with distinct parts of Liverpool (Granby Toxteth and Chinatown respectively) over a considerable part of the twentieth century. Their contrasting experiences and contemporary position in society indicate many of the issues that all ethnic minority groups in Liverpool have to deal with.

The chapter then provides a critical analysis of the community's shortcomings and achievements in effectuating integration and parity with the generality of Liverpool. It also considers the community's success in maintaining connections with its ‘transnational’ origins and its role in contributing to the viewing of Liverpool as a uniquely multicultural metropolis from the past to contemporary times. Finally it considers what potential issues and scenarios might affect the community in the future.

Much has beenwritten aboutLiverpool's past; paradoxically,however, there has been little published about the incidence of Black and Asian migration and settlement from a historical perspective. A considerable amount of information about this can, however, be garnered from the historical records of shipping activities in Liverpool, for example from the records of the Blue Funnel Line (serving China and much of South East Asia) and the Elder Dempster Line (mainly servingWest Africa). There were also a number of commissioned social welfare reports, such as the Fletcher Report (1930) and the Caradog Jones Survey (1940), whose controversial findings and recommendations gave a particularly negative view of the Black community in Liverpool. Therehave also been the semi-historical accounts ofwriters and residents, such as Dickens (1898) and Hocking (1879) who both provide snapshot (albeit fictional) views of Liverpool's minority resident groups and their lifestyles.