Our record-setting protests involved reckoning with White guilt (my term) and the denial of White racism for too long. As well, thinking about the role of racism, nativism, and bigotry in the Trump administration, and how the protests many of us attended were largely White, reminded me of this recent article arguing that the 'radicalization' of Whites post-election is connected to our complacency if not blindness towards White Supremacy. This book, like most of what I read these days, makes me reflect on White racism and how it manifests all over the world but particularly vile in the West against people of color. What does this say about human nature, diversity, equality?

Tokenism and Whiteness-as-default in social media, educational curriculum, and the workplace are similar on either side of the pond, as well.

Similarities include how we accept most immigrants who are 'gifted' and truly exceptional (think of women doing 'twice as much to be thought half as good') and how Asian, African/Black, and other ethnic minorities face remarkable and brutal harassment, especially in our schools, and generally with White perpetrators, too. Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.Ī touching and often funny set of stories of immigration in the UK, with many parallels to how we've approached immigration and treated immigrants in the US, both historically and currently. Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’?īringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms. How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?

The good immigrant