Black Skin No Masks*

The election of the first black person to lead a major British political party raises some puzzling questions

There is something very strange or possibly rather wonderful going on in British politics where the Conservative Party, often a stranger to change, has crashed through two glass ceilings, first by having a man of Indian origin as its leader, then moving on to select Kemi Badenoch, a woman of Nigerian origin for the job.

Labour, which prides itself on being at the forefront of campaigns for racial and sexual equality, has never elected a female nor a person of colour as party leader.

When Kemi Badenoch gave her acceptance speech she referred neither to her sex or gender. However Labour’s Keir Starmer was fulsome in acknowledging the breakthrough she made.

This is somewhat strange but only if you do not know that Ms. Badenoch rarely speaks about her race or sex. As a student she sensed the stale aroma of patronage in the assumption of well-meaning fellow students who thought she would want to be seen in these terms. She believes that individuals make their own destiny and is suspicious of group identity.

And yet her race and gender cannot be ignored because she does not look like any previous Tory leader and has experiences as a black person, who spent most of her childhood in Nigeria, which sets her apart from other party leaders.

Arguably she achieved political prominence neither despite her race and gender nor because of it but simply because these issues have faded so far into the background as to no longer be of much importance.

This is certainly an optimistic way of viewing this situation but clearly is not the way Ms. Badenoch sees British politics. She has long been an enthusiastic combatant in the trenches of cultural warfare. She happily stands on the frontlines of the battle against wokeness which, in her eyes, has distorted thinking about women and has disrespected ethnic minorities..

She and her fellow anti-woke campaigners are quick to apply the taunt of being woke to anyone daring to challenge old cultural assumptions about history, religion, race and gender. This kind of thinking led, for example, to denouncing sportsmen and women who expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement for stepping into arena they had no right to occupy.

On the other side of the fence a woke agenda is producing demands that those with other views should be silenced and indeed thrown out of jobs. There is also some curiously obsessive concern with the use of gender-free vocabulary and evidence of strange contortions searching for appropriate ways of talking about race.

While the war of words rages the ugly side of racism has been alarmingly manifested most clearly in this summer’s anti-immigrant riots. More lasting has been the emergence of a major political force in the shape of Reform UK which has racism as its core message – albeit in coded form.

And discrimination has not disappeared. Police forces appear to be riddled with it, even the national sport, cricket, has had its reputation for fair play besmirched by racial prejudice.

The idea that questions of race and gender have largely been settled in an amicable fashion therefore strains credibility.

And yet Britain is clearly a changed country. The unthinkable just decades ago is now routine. Interracial marriage is commonplace and widely accepted, Ms. Badenoch’s own choice of a marriage partner is testimony to this. And the prominence of ethnic minority personalities in all walks of life is barely remarked upon.

Racial discrimination, once casual and profoundly damaging is now illegal. The laws which enforce this new status quo are less important in themselves than as a clear signal that society no longer tolerates institutional racism nor indeed sexual discrimination.

The irony is that Kemi Badenoch, who refuses to see her race or gender as an issue, has become something of symbol for a Britain where old attitudes have sufficiently changed to make it possible for her to be elected as leader of the Tory Party.

She will not say it or indeed acknowledge that the reason why this is so is because she stands on the shoulders of brave people, Suffragettes, anti-racist fighters and others who in less organized fashion, paid a heavy price in the struggle for equality.

Those who benefited from the old status quo resisted change for as long as they could but defending the indefensible was always going to end.

So, here we are in this strange and surprisingly pleasant land where, like it or not, a victory for change has been led by someone who will not recognize how it came about and resolutely refuses to identify with those who have suffered discrimination .

As Americans might say – go figure.

*Frantz Fanon’s groundbreaking work ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ has been shamelessly abused for this headline, sorry.