Black and minority ethnic Britons can only succeed, according to much left-wing thinking, on terms laid down for them by their progressive elders and betters. Step outside of their destiny as the suffering poor waiting to be rescued by the Labour Party, and all they get is abuse.
Nimco Ali moved from Somalia to Manchester at the age of four, and is now an author and chief executive of the Five Foundation, which campaigns against female genital mutilation. From today's Sunday Times (£) - Priti Patel and Sajid Javid make history, but the left offers only bile:
"It’s been a massive day for my family,” I announced on Twitter last week. “One of us finished uni, one of us had our book next to Queen Obama and the other @Mohamed_Y_Ali went and got himself selected as a Tory candidate. Shout out to our refugee families who made us the men and women we are today.”
You would expect these achievements would be greeted with cheers and joy, seeing they were firsts for members of my family, who are all either refugees or the children of refugees.
My brother is now the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cardiff North, and it was my new book, What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway), that I discovered on display next to “Queen” Michelle Obama’s autobiography, Becoming.Sadly, however, if you achieve anything as a black or a brown person without the permission of the “woke” and the left, you are chastised for having the audacity to hope for, aim for or achieve anything outside what the left and the Labour Party deem suitable for you.
To dare to be different is a crime which will be met with vile tweets and articles in national newspapers.
My tweet was a storm in a teacup compared with the reaction from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and his cult to Boris Johnson’s ethnically diverse cabinet.
The Labour frontbencher Clive Lewis pretended to tweet “genuine congratulations” to James Cleverly on his appointment as chairman of the Conservative Party but went on to accuse him and other “black members of that cabinet” of selling their “souls and self-respect to get there”.
Writing in The Guardian, Kehinde Andrews claimed that the new black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) cabinet ministers “may be good for optics, but it should be easy enough to see through the mirage”.
He added insultingly: “Do not be fooled: a cabinet packed with ministers with brown skin wearing Tory masks represents the opposition of racial progress.”
What? Sajid Javid and Priti Patel, both Bame MPs, were given two of this country’s top roles — chancellor and home secretary — and a woman of colour, Munira Mirza, now heads the No 10 policy unit. These are incredible firsts that mean a lot.
Black and Asian kids up and down this country can now see themselves holding the highest offices in the UK. [...]
The Labour Party wants us to wait so it can “emancipate us”. We are not to seek our own success nor the success of our communities.
There is a real struggle in Bame communities. I see it every day. But the Labour Party is led by a man who refuses to see a boy from inner-city Bristol becoming chancellor as an achievement for us all.
During the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn claimed: “Only Labour can be trusted with unlocking the potential of black, Asian and minority ethnic people.”
The fact that he could put out a message like that shows you how far the Labour Party has to go and how wrong they are about people like me and those who make up a growing number of the UK’s black population. [...]
The left wants to frame my life experience via the prism of helplessness and victimhood. I am meant to be consumed by all that has happened to me — to long for all that I have lost and wait to be rescued, but I have always refused to do that.
I see strength in surviving and a reason to carry on. As my favourite rapper, Cardi B, says, “Knock me down nine times but I get up ten.”
Comments