We cope with the micro slights and othering. But openly racist attitudes are being exploited for political gain, says the Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
after he was reportedly recorded saying “all white men should have a Black slave” and that black people “are a lower class than us white people”. Neither of these incidents suggest that Britain is a uniformly racist place, but clearly, I think it’s safe to say, something is going on.
And that something is that it is possible for a society to make large strides towards racial equality, and still be meaningfully prejudiced in ways that make life difficult and uncomfortable for a significant number of people of colour. This is not a complicated fact. Racism isn’t a disease that is cured by a single shot of medicine, it’s a combination of attitudes and social values around which there are varying levels of agreement. We have agreed, for example, that you can’t say the N-word.
Constantly realising all the questions you thought were settled are in fact not, is my abiding experience of being a non-white Briton. Along with those realisations comes a queasy sense of foreboding, because I know that suggesting that all might not be well in Britain on the race front isn’t going to be pretty. In choosing not to smile, there is a price to pay.
Any questions asked of the appropriateness of our symbols or historical legacies is not merely met with a lack of deference, but with punishment. Students who suggest modifying curriculums are
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