David Milner obituary

My father, David Milner, who has died aged 74, was a distinguished social psychologist who spent his career interrogating prejudice and social difference. He was also tremendously witty and charismatic.

In the 1970s, David adapted previous US experiments from the 1940s using dolls with different skin colours to examine British children’s attitudes to race. The results formed the basis of his book Children and Race (Penguin, 1975), which he updated in 1983. He found that British ethnic minority children often reacted to living in a racist society by showing a disidentification with their own ethnic group and a preference for the white majority.

When asked “which one of these two dolls looks more like you?”, 100% of the white children chose the light-skinned doll, but so did 48% of the black children and 24% of the Asian children. The controversial findings made an important contribution to the anti-racist movement in education.

Born in Mill Hill, north London, David was the son of Joan (nee Leighfield), a secretary, and Jacob Milner, a chemist, whose Lithuanian Jewish parents fled to the UK at the turn of the century to escape the pogroms. David was raised alongside his elder sister, Jacky, in Southgate, and attended Minchenden grammar school, before studying psychology at University College, Cardiff, graduating in 1967.

David studied for his doctorate at the University of Bristol under the influential social psychologist Henri Tajfel, who became a close friend.

Alongside academia, David was a committed activist, through the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, anti-war protests, the 1968 student occupation of Bristol University’s Senate House and, later, in the efforts to free George Davis – a cab driver wrongfully jailed for a 1974 burglary whose conviction was finally quashed in 2011.

In 1976, David was appointed a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Central London (later the University of Westminster). Alongside colleagues, he was instrumental in establishing the psychology department and degree programme. When he was appointed professor in 1991, his inaugural lecture confronted institutional racism in the history of psychology and its links to eugenics.

During the 1990s, David raised money for a Romanian orphanage, and made several visits including a 3,000 mile round-trip in his Ford Granada, stacked high with books and toys.

He retired from Westminster in 2006, hosting the last of the quiz nights he had become known for during his time at the university. He took to writing tirelessly: producing a novel, an autobiography, two plays, and countless blog posts. David was a long-suffering Spurs season ticket holder, scarcely missing a home game between 1983 and the closure of stadiums last year.

His diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer came just before lockdown in March last year. With no scope to work through a “bucket-list”, he made the most of his time with his two daughters, Cora and me. The three of us quarantined together in north London, watching TV and pondering the Guardian cryptic crossword between hospital appointments. He faced his illness courageously.

He married and divorced twice but ended his life on good terms with his ex-wives, who were present during his final days. He is survived by his stepson, Daniel, and me from his marriage to Rosmond Kinsey Milner, by his daughter Cora and stepson, Jack, from his marriage to Vybra Morris, by his grandson, Reuben, and Jacky.