Some of us are already postracial
Against racial pessimism
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Now on with today’s piece.
On the road where I live in London there are the following businesses: A chippy run by a Cantonese-speaking couple, a kebab shop and supermarket owned by an Arabic-speaking family, a newsagent’s staffed by a South Asian couple, an excellent Indian takeaway, a Chinese takeaway (which my spouse, herself Chinese, hates) and a handsome English gastropub. There’s also a French-style café headed by a different South Asian couple and right next to my house a nail shop run by someone called Kylie. At certain times, a Saturday shop can feel like a run through the United Nations delegations, slipping in and out of different worlds, gathering Turkish yoghurt drinks and British bacon before returning home to read online about how racist this ‘rainy fascist island’ is. Incidentally, the weather has been nice of late.
Now, to be clear, I’m not one of those people who confuses the excesses of trends in online anti-racism for there being no such thing as racism at all. Racism is real and a great evil; with my Jewish heritage, I’ve experienced it first-hand, and it’s a grotesque feeling to be reduced to things you can do nothing about. I’ve seen friends deal with vile racism in exactly the same multicultural London I hymned in my opening paragraph, and I’ve witnessed my East Asian spouse attract careless comments which have left me incensed on her behalf.
When I criticize the excesses of current anti-racist practice I don’t mean to withdraw from a commitment to fight racism. After all, what we might criticize as the ‘essentialist turn’ in progressive politics is in part to criticize because it shades into racism. Concepts like there being some intrinsic essence of ‘whiteness’ which is shared by people as disparate from the Irish to the Poles. Treating people in racial groups as homogenous in their politics and implying there’s only way to be a member of a minority. These are ways of discussing race which are unusably crude and if taken seriously generate only fresh stupidities.
What I do reserve, though, is on a very personal level the right not to give a shit about race. And I mean specifically what the race of the people I meet and know are. I care about what you think, what you’ve experienced and what you’re doing but I don’t, at 40 years old and with two decades of living in large multicultural cities under my belt, give a toss about the pigmentation of your skin. To the extent I am interested in it, it might be to counsel you in what shades you might select on a shopping trip, but beyond that is a non-factor. I won’t say I don’t notice it – yes, I am aware of your skin colour – but I don’t, on a very fundamental level, care.