Those on the right seek to end the celebration on the basis that it amounts to special treatment for a group that doesn’t deserve it. History should be colour-blind: society should not differentiate, they say. We are not racist, we just want fairness.
But often, they are – and they really don’t. On the other side of the argument are the progressives, notably minority progressives, who say the idea of a month to consider Black history is demeaning because it should already have a year-round place in our teaching and consciousness. There is a further view that any beneficial effect the month once had has been diluted by unimaginative repetition and commercially motivated virtue signalling.
Players taking the knee in the Premier League? Been there, done that: yawn! I have long taken the glass-half-full approach.
The ideal would be for Black history to be incorporated into the social and educational culture – and perhaps one day it will be. But in the meantime, I’ll take a mandated, month-long focus on the Black contribution to the way our society has evolved. And it seems very necessary this year, when the very notion of belonging in Britain and other major western countries has been so under attack.
A year in which we have clearly seen that a political party, with pretensions to lead the country, attracts activists with ugly racist and nativist views – at national and local level – with the same efficiency that magnets attract iron filings. Our expectations are different now. When transcripts of the things Reform folk say in private reach the public domain, the old-fashioned Tory dog-whistle seems comparatively quaint.
This is a year in which we have again seen the confidence and daring of those who cuddle close to pseudo-scientific theories asserting white superiority and black inferiority. The racial eugenicists are back from the fringes, championed down their venal path by Donald Trump, whose leadership of the free world gladhands nativists, targets Black officials and routinely belittles Black enemies as “low IQ”. It’s been a year in which toxic politics and the mainstreaming of intolerance – against minorities of many categories – has led to racist unpleasantness on our streets and in the workplace.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
