Modern racism is loud and proud

Kenan Malik

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"This photo should strike fear into the heart of all Englishmen," wrote one. "Why are they all foreigners?" asked another. "You are literally teaching children that genocidal replacement is good, so long as it's white people being replaced," claimed a third.

All were responding to a photo that Katharine Birbalsingh had posted on X of a class at her school. The headteacher of Michaela community school, in northwest London, and self-described as "Britain's strictest headmistress", Birbalsingh has often faced criticism from the left for her conservative views.

This time, though, the onslaught was from the far right and hardline racists. The photo was mainly of black and Asian children. For some, this tagged it as a class of "foreigners". Birbalsingh herself was condemned as an "invader". There were more than a thousand responses, most of them hostile.

"Racists always existed," a bewildered Birbalsingh wrote, but "things are much, much worse now". But what is it that is much worse?

There would be little sympathy from the public for the kind of racism Birbalsingh faced.

Few people think that to be British is to be white. More than twice as many believe that Britishness is about respecting laws and political institutions rather than ancestry.

What has changed is that out-and-out racists have become more confident in proclaiming their bigotry. That confidence rests on the way that ethnic notions of national identity, and laments for white decline, have seeped into the language of mainstream conservatism.