Ever since the election of Donald Trump, the putative rise of “white supremacy” or “white nationalism” has been a perennial worry among mainstream pundits, both inside America and abroad. For liberals, the imminent rise of “fascism” serves as a powerful …
Harry Flashman’s imperial morality
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the times catch up with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books. One can imagine the scene: an earnest young editor picks up a copy of the books, drawn to them by the …
Anti-racism attacks my American Dream
What was I — a lifelong Democrat — doing at an election watch party in rural Virginia, surrounded by Republicans? As Ron DeSantis, 800 miles away, filled a huge TV screen with a post-landslide victory speech, he provided part of …
The erasure of black Jews
What does a Jew look like? If you ask this slightly suspicious question, most people’s minds will conjure a stereotype. The Woody Allen type: scrawny, cerebral, wears horn-rimmed glasses and probably has a prominent nose. Few people would immediately think …
The British police need guns
The public unsurprisingly jumped to conclusions when it was reported, earlier this month, that a Metropolitan Police officer had fatally shot an apparently unarmed black man. Voices from the black community and beyond have speculated that the shooting was either …
The American media’s racism fantasy
It was the kind of correction you love to see. The story that originally broke in the final days of August, about a young black athlete being racially heckled in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah’s Brigham Young …
The Queen saved the Commonwealth
“Racism was outlawed in England in the 60s & it’s been allowed to thrive so why should black & brown mourn!! #queen”, tweeted — and then deleted — the former footballer Trevor Sinclair. An associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, …
America doesn’t want a civil war
In the story America tells about 9/11, the attack was a tragedy, but a tragedy that united the nation. “We were able to come together as a country at that terrible time; we put aside differences,” said Hillary Clinton on …
Why is Edward Enninful editing Vogue?
Why are the models so thin? Why are the clothes so expensive? And what is the point of fashion? These were questions I had to answer pretty much every day for the decade I worked as a fashion journalist, and …
Schools shouldn’t fly BLM flags
After more than two years of disruption, American schoolchildren are finally returning to something approaching normal education — in-person, and without masks or social distancing or other “non-pharmaceutical interventions”. But many of these children are returning transformed. Last week, data …
Race is a delusion
How flattering to be asked to recommend an overlooked book. I have the habit of sending beloved books on to friends. This is, I know, the delusion of an amity which nowhere extends to suggestions of literature. I know that …
Beyoncé will be sorry
Beyoncé named her most recent album after the golden age of creative expression, the era that gave us the greatest art the world has ever seen. Renaissance was supposed to usher in another moment of wild, unbridled innovation. The album …
The violent heart of Boston
On the sultry evening of 28 July, at around 6.20pm, two young girls were playing with a hula hoop and a toy pram in the centre of Boston, Lincolnshire. A woman in an upstairs flat smiled to see the nine-year-old …
The antidote to America’s race wars
The date 1619 does not appear in the introduction to African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer’s encyclopaedic, magisterial new book. But the controversial project that takes that date as its name — launched …
Our universities need a revolution
What is the point of university? It used to be, when Harvard was founded in 1636, “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity”. But in recent years the university has taken on an altogether narrower character. Learning is no …