The UK Conservative Party has been rightly criticised for its weaponisation of identity politics in recent weeks, with cheerleaders for this patently racist institution praising the number of Black and Brown faces running to be leader.
But this doesn’t begin or end with the Tories. It would be more useful to see this discussion as the extension of a ‘diversity and inclusion’ (D&I) agenda that has taken the place of more nuanced conversations about white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, cisheteronormativity culture and more.
What bell hooks called “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” envelops the world over, so we should be unsurprised when there are some Black and Brown people acting like their white managers. After all, as Monisha Rajesh tweeted: “If empire was taught at schools you’d all know that the British didn’t colonise without the willing assistance of upper class brown and Black people who stood to gain. This is nothing new.”
