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True story: 20 years ago, during my gap year, I worked in a website design agency near Holborn. My manager, a young affluent white lady, mentioned someone in the company and I asked “is that the black guy?” She and another equally well to do white lady recoiled in horror. “You
can’t say that...” they retorted. I asked what I was meant to say. There was, after all, only one black person in the entire company and it seemed to be a legitimate identifier. My manager’s reply? “You could say, the one with the leather jacket...or the frizzy hair.” No joke 
At that moment I learnt something that never left me. Many upper middle class and well-to-do white people are in the midst of an awful internal battle. On one hand they never grew up around anyone black and are thus full of innate prejudice yet on the other hand are absolutely
convinced that they’re good people. They are also educated. So everything they know tells them racism is wrong and thus they shouldn’t be racist. So they’re in this constant internal conflict and it manifests in these completely ludicrous over compensations which themselves are
hugely patronising. This can range from worrying about things like cultural appropriation through to full on literal self flagellation. This has gone on to manifest itself in Champagne socialism and books like White Fragility...itself written by a confessed racist. And above all
it has manifested in a complete inability in huge swathes of the middle class refusing to oppose a group in BLM that literally want everything that ISN’T in their interests. They keep their heads down, say the ‘virtuous’ things, read the ‘virtuous’ books, give a few quid to Comic
Relief, & it feeds their internal demon for another sacrifice cycle. However, those of us that grew up with, & aren’t phased by, all types of people know that all people are capable of achieving if they prioritise hard work. We don’t need to patronise & we don’t need to kid glove
