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The future is mixed-race Remi Adekoya's new book is a timely antidote to a polarising debate

Britain’s mixed-race story is also about the partnerships and marriages across ethnic boundaries.

Britain’s mixed-race story is also about the partnerships and marriages across ethnic boundaries.


February 4, 2021   6 mins

Remi Adekoya is just the man to apply some balm to this country’s often polarised and paranoid debate about race.

The mixed-race Polish-Nigerian writes in a gentle and nuanced manner about the messiness of human identity, especially in its racial and ethnic aspects. And his own life story — one foot in a relatively rich poor country (Nigeria) and another in a poorer rich country (Poland) — has given him an unusually privileged vantage point from which to observe the complexities, and complexes, of race.

Members of the political class (broadly defined) in modern democracies are increasingly called upon to be both outsiders and insiders. The 42 year-old Adekoya is a model outsider-insider, and able to act as a discerning connection point between different worlds.

He has felt the humiliation of racial abuse, particularly as a young man in Poland, and even after many years of living in western countries can still feel the pull of the traditional worldviews that still prevail in much of the developing world. Yet he is also an insider, an accomplished journalist and now academic, well-connected in three different countries.

His African roots allow him to speak about race with less circumlocution and evasion than is common in the liberal West. He can write with authority about the tendency to in-group preference, about the racism of whites and non-whites and the psychological well-spring they both share, and he understands the cultural chauvinism of parents who do not want their children to be lost to the tribe or religion.

So who better to write a book not just about race but about being mixed race? Biracial Britain: A Different Way of Looking at Race is a timely antidote to the sectarian finger-pointing and moralising about race so prevalent in our contemporary debate.

This is mainly a showing not telling book: a series of 25 extended interviews with different people about the experience of growing up mixed race, framed by his commentaries and often wry reflections on his own biracial journey.

It is not an academic book. There are few facts and figures. There are people telling their stories. And Adekoya’s interviewees have been selected to provide the widest possible range of experiences spread across all relevant ethnic mixings and across time.

The basic numbers for this country are simple enough: the mixed race population of the UK is around 2.5% (about 1.6m) and is the fastest growing ethnic group, about 50% are white-black, 25% white-Asian and 25% intra-non-white. The future is beige: in his book, Whiteshift, Eric Kaufmann estimates that the UK will be 30% mixed race by the end of this century and 75% by 2150.

Mixed race people in the UK (at least those with one white parent) tend to be better integrated and, on average, more successful than their equivalents in the non-white ethnic group that one of their parents belongs to. But they still experience their own peculiar brand of joys and sorrows, and are now emerging more confidently as a distinct group to tell that story.

From interviews with younger mixed-race people, it is clear that the overt hostility towards, or pitying of, the older “half-castes” growing up in the 1950s, with two sets of grandparents who never speak to each other, has long gone. But dilemmas remain.

There is, for example, the pressure from society and relatives to identify more with one side than another. Adekoya even describes how some black activists follow their own version of the “one drop” rule of the racist American south: insisting that someone who is half or even one quarter black must identify as black.

Mixed-race people have more options for both belonging and rejection, and some of the interviewees admit to not feeling completely at home in either of their ethnic groups. Many have had bumpy rides of various kinds. There is the joy of discovery when finding a non-white father who had been absent when an interviewee was growing up. There are the accounts of people feeling pressured to “perform” an ethnicity that they have no real connection to. There is the disappointment of visiting an ancestral home and finding you are not accepted. There is even a pair of mixed-race twins who don’t get on because each identifies with different sides of their heritage.

Adekoya says he could rise above the racial abuse he encountered in Poland because of the Nigerian sense of superiority his father had drilled into him. “Nigerians firmly believe they are a special people endowed with a unique intelligence, resilience and creativity that predestines them for greatness. This is the gospel I was raised in and I was a firm believer.”

But this shield does not protect all black people. Indeed, in his reflections on so-called “colourism” Adekoya argues that the opposite is often the case. The curse of colourism is the tendency of black people in poorer, non-white, parts of the world to esteem lighter skin, which mixed race people with a white parent tend to benefit from, often with a guilty conscience.

And his answer to this is controversially pragmatic. “Colourism will not be eliminated by well-meaning intellectuals telling people it is a bad thing; it will be eliminated when the white world stops being so much richer and more successful than everyone else. Then regular black and brown folk will stop looking up to it so much and start admiring their own kind. But this will only happen if their own nations become rich and successful. I do not like that this is the way it is, but this is the way it is. Wealth and success is what impresses the world today. The road to the end of white supremacy lies in economics, not sociology, history or semantics.”

This is a powerful insight and if the economic success of Africa in the past decade is replicated in the next five then we might be able to test the hypothesis. But what if Nigeria does not become as rich and successful as Denmark in the next 50 years, even as it heads towards becoming the most populous country on earth? Are black people around the world, including in the North American and European diasporas, condemned to battle a collective inferiority complex?

This is surely too pessimistic, at least for black minorities in the US and Europe. Two ethnic stereotypes have changed dramatically in Britain in my life-time. The Irish and the Indian. The Irish shift follows Adekoya’s logic: as Ireland moved from being a poor, rural country with relatively low levels of education, to being a highly educated, post-industrial one, richer than Britain, the old stereotype of the slow-witted Irish became untenable.

The Indian stereotype has also changed dramatically as British-Indians have marched into the professional middle class in their millions and yet the reality of India has not changed that much, the country has patches of great wealth and a growing middle class but it is still home to the largest number of truly poor people in the world. Indian success in the diaspora has changed the image of Indians, not the rise of the Indian economy.

Surely that success can be replicated by black minorities in rich countries too. A critical mass of successful black professionals is already emerging in many places and that looks a better pathway to generalised black confidence than a well-governed Nigeria with a booming economy, a decent welfare state and nuclear weapons.

Half-Indian/Half-Irish Sunder Katwala, the head of the British Future think tank (and the only interviewee to be identified), is an optimist on this and says that “Britain is doing much better on race than on class”. But the reason why this does not seem more apparent is because “there is now a split between academic, media and political environments and the lived experience of the rest of the country… the problem is that the race discourse is dominated by people who spend all their time on it, we don’t hear enough from people who just get on with their everyday lives and are not defined by race.”

This is not, however, a complacent book celebrating a post-racial country; it rather reflects a messy reality in which about half of ethnic minority Britons think their colour has held them back in life, while the other half think it hasn’t.

Every mixed-raced child is a sort of gamble on the world becoming a less tribal place. And Britain’s mixed-race story is also unavoidably about the partnerships and marriages across ethnic boundaries. Adekoya observes his own parents’ difficulties with dispassionate sympathy but this is one area where a few more facts and figures might have been helpful. I wanted to know whether partnerships and marriages across ethnic lines are more fragile than those within them? And if so are they becoming more robust as society becomes more tolerant?

Adekoya does not have all the answers but, looking ahead, he sees the mixed-race identity becoming less defensive and freer to draw on multiple identities without feeling pressured to choose one. He also thinks that mixed race people have something valuable to offer in today’s atmosphere of racial polarisation.

“Growing up mixed race is a life experience that lays the groundwork for an inclusive open-minded attitude towards others… The circumstances of our mixed heritages and upbringing makes delving into the perspectives of others come somewhat naturally to us because it is what we had to do to fit in growing up.”

Barack Obama had a special talent for making different kinds of people feel comfortable around him because of his biracial life experience, says Adekoya. By the same token, Adekoya himself seems poised to become one of the most important and subtle new voices in Britain’s never-ending conversation about race.


David Goodhart is the author of Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century. He is head of the Demography unit at the think tank Policy Exchange.

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David Owsley
David Owsley
3 years ago

“The basic numbers for this country are simple enough: the mixed race population of the UK is around 2.5%…”

No way, from the small amount of TV I actually get to see (usually just ad breaks in televised rugby or football) I have deduced that the UK is at least 75% mixed race.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  David Owsley

same in the States. It’s practically a drinking game here.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  David Owsley

I used to say this but sport is a bit different. I guess that sport have greater than average non-white.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

It’s the same with all TV ads, not just those during sports programming.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  David Owsley

“from the small amount of TV I actually get to see (usually just ad breaks in televised rugby or football) I have deduced that the UK is at least 75% mixed race.”

Not only that, they are all really wealthy, and live in fabulous houses. 😀

gardner.peter.d
gardner.peter.d
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

And drive Porsches, Ferraris and Maseratis

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago
Reply to  David Owsley

I dont really understand why ? Do the advertisers think folk of colour are more likely to be persuaded to buy stuff ?

Aidan Collingwood
Aidan Collingwood
3 years ago

It’s not about selling stuff. If it was they’d attempt to show the population as it is in order to appeal to the majority and sell stuff to the greatest number of people. I suspect it’s more of a social or cultural signal; they show British society as they’d dearly like it to be. Apparently it’s aspirational to live in a UK that’s at least 75% non-white/ mixed-race, as if the status quo was undesirable and in need of remedying. The message is quite clear. Try that on, for example, Nigerian TV – showing only a smidgen of people in TV adverts as black – and you’d be called a racist and shown the door. So, for a majority white country to be shown as majority non-white is desirable, but not the other way around. Strange, that.

william83
william83
3 years ago

If “the future is mixed race” then look at South and Mid America and the fast changing USA to see what that future will really be like.

Peter LastSpurrier
Peter LastSpurrier
3 years ago

The Advertising Standards Authority insists that adverts ‘avoid stereotypes’.

Stephen Follows
Stephen Follows
3 years ago

It’s about selling the advertisers’ virtue, not their stuff.

Derek M
Derek M
3 years ago
Reply to  David Owsley

The other 25% are fully black

Luke Chew
Luke Chew
3 years ago

The idea that massive demographic change is going to just be a minor bump in the road, that it’ll just settle down, is simply not going to be the case. It’s not been like that in any other country, why should ours be any different? The conversation is going to get a lot more shrill and our political culture a lot more brittle.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Luke Chew

Err, the article doesn’t say that. I think the main point is that inter-racial marriages help to break down the social walls that have resulted from migration that was too rapid for new arrivals to have integrated as they arrived.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

The pace of change is almost always the thing that creates problems rather than the actual fact of change. The problem in Western countries , and Britain is better integrated than many, is that too rapid an increase in immigration changes places and that alienates the people who used to live there.

It doesn’t happen to upper middle class people because the significant things for , well as an extremely working class person *made good* (as they used to say) …for middle/upper middle class people isn’t skin colour but people able to talk, think and share in the same lifestyle and outlook you share in.

The pdifferent perceptions to that in race relations amongst working class people aren’t always because *lower classes* are thick and bigoted, I feel it’s because on both sides of the divide the experiences of each are of people not *like them*. Whereas the richer people are the more often it ends up as people who are….. like them.

Richer people then mistake this as an intelligence thing, but I think it’s about class as much as it’s about race. (Which is weirdly part of the reason labour has gone so wrong and fallen so far in the last couple of years)

The book sounds like an interesting read.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
3 years ago
Reply to  Luke Chew

I don’t agree. I think with BLM we’ve reached peak shrill and peak brittle. There’s a clear backlash against that type of identity politics. I’m hoping that a silver lining of Covid could be that everyone is so fed up with shrill and brittle that they focus on moving forward.

Adam M
Adam M
3 years ago

It’s nice to be optimistic but unfortunately I have to agree philosopher John Gray, that the future is likely to be a lot more like the past than we might want to imagine. We may live in a nice tolerant bubble in the western world. But in most other parts of the world, racism and tribalism is simply the norm.

It’s strange to think that as someone who’s half Irish, I may have been the subject of some level of discrimination a century (or less) ago. But in modern Britain, lost in a sea of different ethnicities, I am safely, simply labeled as ‘white’. Changing demographics may change the types of tribe a person identifies (or is identified) with but I think the continued existence of tribalism, even if suppressed is inevitable.

Though I made friends from all over the world while at University, and they remain some of my closest friends. I realized that most of the rest, grew up within maybe a 10-20mile radius of where I had. Even though we had diverse backgrounds, where we had grown up defined us and drew us back together. Similarly in another social group at a previous job, I realized that the majority of us had a Catholic background, despite none of us being Church goers. Tribalism goes far beyond race and is often mostly subconscious.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
3 years ago
Reply to  Adam M

I identify with your last sentence. Being born in the North Isles to mixed-race parents I am a pure mongrel of norse, celtic and germanic genes. However, when I worked for years in Norway I felt comfortably ‘at home’ and found I enunciated the language as a native rather than a alien. My accord is Scandinavian but my nationality has always been British rather that ‘scottish,’ whatever that means.

Allie McBeth
Allie McBeth
3 years ago
Reply to  Gordon Black

Being born in England to Irish parents, of Spanish pirate descent; I have a great French accent!

Peter LastSpurrier
Peter LastSpurrier
3 years ago
Reply to  Adam M

Desmond Morris believed people are naturally tribal. If there aren’t any tribes already, we invent some.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago

Yes – and I think that is what modern tribalism is. It’s Brexit v Remain, it’s woke v non-woke, globalist v nationalist etc. No different under the skin, so to speak, at all. In fact in some ways I think it is worse because opposing values seem to be far harder to reconcile than an arbitrary characteristic you don’t choose, like skin colour. I could be wrong though.

Ben
Ben
3 years ago

I wish we could just treat people as people and honour them on the basis of their character rather than the colour of their skin. Policy makers should be doing everything to build our common values rather than picking away at our differences which has become a fetish amongst the mainstream media.

David McKee
David McKee
3 years ago
Reply to  Ben

…which is, of course, exactly what Martin Luther King said. And I entirely agree.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Ben

our new president chose a running mate specifically because of color and sex, and his party had demanded that he do so.

gardner.peter.d
gardner.peter.d
3 years ago
Reply to  Ben

Try telling that to Joe Biden! the USA and the world is in for a very bad time with him in the White House. Everything now will be based on skin colour tinged with a gender of your choice.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

A newcomer to the US who watched tv for an hour would come away from the commercials believing that 1) the country is 85% black and 2) virtually every relationship/marriage is mixed race. But if this mixed race future means we can finally stop talking about race, and stop hearing people use it as an excuse for everything, great. Works for me since I fall into that category of ‘racially ambiguous’ anyway.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Same in the UK.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

But then future archaeologists, with nothing to go on but adverts and careers posters would also assume that most engineers were female, everybody was happy, and nobody was poor.

Michael Coleman
Michael Coleman
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

” But if this mixed race future means we can finally stop talking about race, and stop hearing people use it as an excuse for everything, great.”

One would hope this would lead to a post-racial order but if we still have some semblance of a market economy or other system that rewards ability and hard work at this future point in time, there still likely will be outcome differences between “pure” white and “mixed” groups and thus the political struggle for equal outcomes will continue.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

You’re probably right, which means we will still have people using race a cudgel and twisting themselves into knots to excuse and justify the laggards.

The fixation on race ignores culture, for obvious reasons. The US has no small number of genuine Africans who left poverty and hostility behind, came here and built good lives. Meanwhile, the native born squander the resources that come of being born here and perpetually wallow in grievance.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

On a visit to the US in the late 60s I remember being astounded by and ad for deodorant on TV in which the person with BO was white and his black friend advised him which deodorant to use. That would not have happened in the UK at that time.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

It’s true – we laugh about this today. USA blacks are 13% of the population but you would think otherwise as every commercial has an interracial couple. That said, it’s a form of propaganda and folks know it.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Some of this is dictated by various government regulatory agencies. In banking for example, banks must have a certain percentage of their advertising feature black people. Native Americans, Latinos and Hispanics and Asians do not count as “diverse”. A gay couple in an ad for mortgages would not count as diverse if both parties are white. In addition, banks must advertise in areas outside their market if their market is “too white”. They are provided census tracts by regulatory agencies and required to advertise in tracts far from their market to meet regulatory demands. Of course they won’t get any business from far off census tracts but that doesn’t appear to matter.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago

“Nigerians firmly believe they are a special people endowed with a unique intelligence, resilience and creativity that predestines them for greatness. This is the gospel I was raised in and I was a firm believer.”

That’s interesting. I didn’t realise Nigerians had such a sense of specialness, almost manifest destiny. I don’t know why though. Lots of people have: the Jews, the Japanese, the Germans (though more quietly nowadays), and the British of yesteryear.

I guess I’d bought into the idea that this is a uniquely white vice and tied to white racism.

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Don’t or didn’t the Americans consider they are ‘exceptional’?

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

That’s right. The Chinese too.

Perhaps it’s perfectly normal – a bit like everyone thinking they are special.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

we did but right now, the country is doing its level best to devolve into second world status.

andrea bertolini
andrea bertolini
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

“Secondo world”? I’d venture “third world”.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

It would appear that the British did a remarkable job of forging a unique Nigerian identity among that territory’s numerous tribes during the course of just a few decades.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Is that the history? Was there no sense of identity prior to the British? No sense of ethnic, if not national, identity?

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

There were no Nigerians before the British. There were Ibo, Fulani, Hausa and many more.

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

That statement puzzled me too, especially since many of the tribes or nations extend into other current nations. While I’m at it, does the author actually believe that Nigeria has the capacity to become the most populous nation on Earth, barring a very drastic decrease in people living in both China and India? As it stands now, with the two Asian giants’ present populations, Nigeria would need to have over 4000 per square mile, over 1500 per square kilometer to match China’s population, nearly that for India. Could the African nation actually feed itself with such density? I have my doubts.

Niels Georg Bach
Niels Georg Bach
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

As far as I remember, after the british took over even the muslim leaders in North Nigeria began sending their kids to english schools and later universities.

Colin Reeves
Colin Reeves
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Not sure how well it has stuck. We got to know a Nigerian student (G) and his family who came to church. A few years later another Nigerian student came along and we invited him to lunch. On seeing a photo in which G appeared he asked “Who is that? He is Ibo. Never trust an Ibo.” Both men Nigerians and Christians, yet it seems tribalism runs deep.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago

Colourism will not be eliminated by well-meaning intellectuals telling people it is a bad thing; it will be eliminated when the white world stops being so much richer and more successful than everyone else.

This assumes that the preference for lighter skin within an ethnic group is a product of current white prosperity. But this may not be the case. The preference for relatively paler skin within ethnic groups is widespread and has a long history, going back before white colonialism or the wealth disparities of the modern era.

A range of explanations have been give for this, none definitive.

Just to be clear, this is a preference for paler skin relative to the group. It is not a preference for white skin.

Alex Wilkinson
Alex Wilkinson
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Steady now, that’s way beyond the boundaries of the current narrative.

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Good points. I would add that the economic success of Japan and the Little Dragons/Tigers should have put some dent in this, assuming that “white” is a synonym for European.

John K
John K
3 years ago

Its a big city thing, too. If you live in London the mix of epidermis shades you see and meet is very different from small towns and rural counties.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  John K

I read a study a while back about DNA analysis of the typical British village and that most DNA has been within 50 miles for eons, ie folks haven’t moved very far. London (and perhaps now Liverpool) is an aberration as most of the population are newly arrived within the past decade.

Most comically, recently, some black chick characterized the British countryside and Brit’s interest in gardening as ‘racist’ because it’s what white Brits like to do – and which most black Brits don’t participate in?! The world is bonkers.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

No no nooo.. We’ve ALWAYS been a multiracial, multicultural island. There is no such thing as a native Brit. We are not a real country or people – everyone else is though.

gardner.peter.d
gardner.peter.d
3 years ago

The fast rise in mixed race proportion of the population is partly the law of small numbers: if you double a small number (100% increase) you still have a small number. Very handy if you want to make a political point or to sell something. More importantly, I believe it is also attributable to a desire of some young people to assert their political correctness, to virtue signal. I have a niece (white) in Australia who deliberately prefers black African (never Aboriginal) immigrant boyfriends to make a political point. There are many like her. It may one day backfire, when the woke accuse her of cultural appropriation. We’ll see.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago

> I wanted to know whether partnerships and marriages across ethnic lines are more fragile than those within them?

The answer is yes, partly because in cross-cultural marriages there are bigger differences in worldview, but mostly because the in-laws are mono-cultural and struggle to understand the outsider.

This is really a question of culture rather than “tinge” – in the case of my own parents who came respectively from Protestant & Catholic backgrounds the religious difference was enough to deny their marriage the support that it needed in its early years.

Or in a country where there is still a strong class system, marriage across class boundaries has pretty much the same set of challenges as an interracial marriage.

[edit – adding more info]

My wife is very interested in the subject and remarked that “fragile” is probably not the right word to use. She said “in cross-cultural marriages there is more to work through; but the overt differences in culture prepare the couple to expect more subtle differences. In a mono-cultural marriage there are no superficial differences to serve as a warning that the couple may be bringing conflicting expectations into the marriage”.

She has recommended some more books on the topic, which address the question of living with cultural differences.

Swaying – Grearson & Smith
The Bride Wore Red – Sethi
Married to a Bedouin – van Geldermalsen

Alison Houston
Alison Houston
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

From what I think have learned from watching The Jolly Heretic on Youtube, which all of you will. enjoy, if only to be outraged, ‘Tinge’, as you put it, is probably more of a factor than most would care to admit, being related to testosterone. The darker the colouring the higher the levels of that hormone, hence the tendency for fast life history strategy, ‘pumping and dumping’ where no strong religious principles are there to temper it.

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

That sounds suspiciously like “white privilege” – because it chucks a bunch of people into a box that is not of their own creating, and then hits said box with a big stick.
Same sort of modern racism that tries to dress itself up as reason.

I grew up in rural Zululand, and even though Apartheid was in full swing and racial generalizations a way of life I never heard the view expressed that there was any moral difference between people of different races.

Alex Wilkinson
Alex Wilkinson
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

You make a massive assumption that it’s not of their own creating.

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago

The picture of the school children reminded me of several schools in Southall, Ealing area where I used to teach. In some schools I atteneded there was only 1 white face and she was Irish. How is the race issue to be resolved when the census for London shows the indigenous ‘white’ population is in the minority? White British-born children are now the minority in many London schools, official figures showed today. In Tower Hamlets, 15 per cent of primary school pupils are classed as white British, while 63 per cent of their classmates come from Bangladeshi families.
UK whites a minority in London classrooms | London Evening …
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk-...
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk-...
Multicultural means just that –multicultural and that is something yet to be seen. Some cultures clash and do not get along. That has resulted in ghettos reminicent of pre WW2 Europe. The current cultures clash is with Islam and it’s rules seeing some non Islamic cutures as ‘haram’ and sometimes violently attacked. As some one who moved outside of my Scottish culture, I can see the problems of acceptance and integration and serious acceptance and integration.

Benjamin Jones
Benjamin Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

Your comment reminded me of the time I did a workshop at a inner London Primary school. The ethnic mix was international but with whites being very much in the minority. However my abiding memory of that school was how well behaved the children were and they were a delight to work with. Many came from war torn back grounds and hearing some of their stories was a humbling experience. Just to add in relation to Robin Smith’s comments below, the school didn’t even have any black out blinds, rendering my power point presentation useless!!

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

But I thought the future was Mermaid – see Mary Harrington’s article.

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Quite. The problem with these confident, optimistic predictions is that they underplay the profound appeal of ethnic solidarity, not to mention the ease with which it is triggered into outright chauvinism. Worse, they omit entirely the venomous influence of those “cynical theories” so perfectly anatomised by Pluckrose and Lindsay. Admitting these dark influences then, is Mr Goodhart content that a rump or minority population of whites will be safe in his freely mingled future? If they are a minority, deprived of prestige, of economic success and relative wealth, will they not need the ultimate “safe space” of a homeland? And if they do not have that; if they appear as a spineless, dethroned, ancient adversary, allegedly guilty for all the wrongs of history, only twenty-five per cent of the populations in their own countries, who is to say that they will not be driven down and out entirely?

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Where can a white Brit go when he is overun to the point of being a really tiny minority in their own land. What was it Enoch Powell said ‘I will become a stranger in my own land’!!! Certainly true in London, B’ham and Wolverhampton!!

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

today, that is considered wrong think. Just ask John Cleese, who came under attack for daring to notice that London stop resembling an English city long ago.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Well, in Wales, we got over all those bloody Anglo-saxons coming in, singing badly.

The Romans were okay, at least they brought ice cream.

M Harries
M Harries
3 years ago

And the underfloor heating!

George Lake
George Lake
3 years ago
Reply to  M Harries

And the Baths.

larry tate
larry tate
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

Certainly true in Slough. I was there the other day and was the only white for miles around. Scary, to say the least.

George Lake
George Lake
3 years ago
Reply to  larry tate

As the late Sir John Betjeman put it so beautifully:

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”

George Lake
George Lake
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

Thanks to, spineless Tory mandarins such as Heath, let alone a plethora of Labour traitors, Enoch was ignored.

Now we prepare to reap the whirlwind.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

Very few people can say for sure what their racial background is. How many even know much about their grandparents or great grandparents? Even those who have done some genetic testing don’t always know, although I have several friends who were surprised at their own results, including finding out that their parents were not who they thought they were.

Then again, who decides what someone may call themselves, how asian do you have to be to be considered asian? Passing as black or Native American is quite common in the US, it’s only recently that people have been caught doing it and subsequently punished for it.

Robbie PPC
Robbie PPC
3 years ago

Dunno about ‘how many even know much about their grandparents
or greatgrandparents’ but going from my Mancunian self – 5 great-grandparents agricultural workers from around Blackburn in East Lancashire, one great grandparent Catholic Southern Irish, 1 Protestant Northern Irish, 1 Lakota Sioux great grandad – and from talking to friends and cousins who have a similar level of family knowledge I suspect the number may be greater than you think.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Robbie PPC

Your ancestry goes back much further than great grandparents of course. It would be almost impossible for anyone to know their complete racial background.

Eugene Norman
Eugene Norman
3 years ago

That 75% of mixed race is far too optimistic even by 2150. Although the UK is different there are plenty of examples where races, ethnic groups, or religious groups don’t mix. In the US black white relationships are rare. Thats after 400 years. In Europe Islamic groups don’t intermarry. In northern Ireland there’s little enough after 300 years or so.

This report says that inter religious relationships are declining:

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk

If it does happen though, which is won’t, most of the beige population will consider itself white. People want to have roots.

Who knows if they will be even be beige, absent a lot of back immigration they won’t. Even then whiteness is regressive but emerges over time. It looks like the white genotype dominates with about 25%-30% non white mixture. Even more for higher skins mixed race.

For the descendants fo the white population ( including mixed race) to be less than that the population would have to increase 3 fold or more and I don’t see that happening.

But this is moot because as the country gets more immigrants they will be more religious, and more populous and probably marry amongst themselves..

Mark H
Mark H
3 years ago
Reply to  Eugene Norman

The counterexample is Brazil, which had almost zero colour consciousness. Sadly in recent years the introduction of racial quotes has made people a lot more sensitive to colour-identities.

rickytick66
rickytick66
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark H

I worked for a very large global Brazilian corporation. There were zero blacks at the top.

Andre Lower
Andre Lower
3 years ago
Reply to  rickytick66

Brazilian born & raised here. Lived there for 40 years. Modern Brazilians are all familiar with the concept of “cordial racism” – that means avoiding/eschewing any sort of mistreatment of non-white people on account of their race, yet still honoring your personal preferences. It is a delicate dance. Of course it is still racism and ultimately limits possibilities for non-white people, but to a far lesser extent than the outright savagery I witnessed in the other 30 countries I visited so far. And of course “personal preference” is treated as personal and obviously variable from person to person.

Peter LastSpurrier
Peter LastSpurrier
3 years ago

Presumably, the different races evolved partly because they didn’t interbreed much. And presumably, the more racial interbreeding there is, the more people will converge towards a racial average. Therefore, there will be less racial diversity. So, ironically, racial diversity is best conserved, if there isn’t much inter-racial breeding. Ironic, because those who claim the most to favour diversity are the most likely to want more people to be mixed race. But then those who claim the most to like diversity, don’t really like the idea that there might be any significant differences between different biological types. Despite the fact that without differences, there is no diversity.

Terence Fitch
Terence Fitch
3 years ago

At various points in our history we came to believe in an independent judiciary, habeas corpus, Classical Greek civilisation as a model, the Enlightenment, scientific enquiry and the separation of religion and the state. All these are fictions and ideals of course and we have our own history of repression and savage inequality, but that is where we are- a secular, private culture believing, often misanthropically, in reason and tolerance. Sadly, this history is not taught clearly in schools and an increasing number of Brits have a vague sketchy idea of our own cultural history. However if you come from a medieval state with misogyny, theocracy, corrupt law, corrupt state with a mafia like ‘big man’ feudal structure ( this includes Russia and China of course) then I don’t see it as Western Europe’s role to offer such people a home. Why for example, do we think that we should allow brutal misogynists or those who believe in the state as corrupt as a justification for personal corruption solace? Our capital is now less than half ‘indigenous’. Just watch any street documentary on YouTube on London in the sixties to see that no other city in the world has had such vast rapid demographic change. I’ll accept the charge of subjectivism here but older Londoners know this. The condescending ignoring of anyone questioning a more planned immigration policy was silenced from the 1950s onwards- after all a bigger population =a ‘bigger’ GDP though not over head of course. And it’s a matter of density. If you’re Green then you believe in rewilding. How much better with a population declining over time to 40 million rather than projected to reach 85 million which will then be the largest in Europe ( Germany is actually declining in population)? In addition the spectre of AI related unemployment and climate change refugees is going to force the issue over the next 50-80+ years.

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago

Its travel of course . In the old days folk of different races stayed put. Today they travel widely and mix more.

Hugh R
Hugh R
3 years ago

Why are mixed-race people so inclined to airbrush perhaps 50% of their genome?
Perhaps their mother, her parents both….back through time….all erased.
Our young white people don’t even care….
I guarantee they will before they get old.

Peter LastSpurrier
Peter LastSpurrier
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh R

I would say it is natural to want your own type and genes to survive. I’m guessing that natural urge is currently suppressed by social pressure.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago

does not answer the question. they airbrush anglo and european even if it is dominant and elevate african/asian ….. why? just be you, most of us have mixed ancestry.

J. Hale
J. Hale
3 years ago

“Nigerians firmly believe they are a special people endowed with a unique intelligence, resilience and creativity…” If a Jew or a German made this claim they would be considered racists. Let’s also point out the the Nigerians starved Biafra to death during their civil war in the 1960s. Not exactly a great civilization.

George Lake
George Lake
3 years ago
Reply to  J. Hale

Thanks to British colonisation.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  J. Hale

Ummm it is also an ethnicity. It is possible to be an atheist Jew. It is not possible to be an atheist Christian or Muslim.

jonathan carter-meggs
jonathan carter-meggs
3 years ago

Aren’t we all mixed race? 23 and me says I come from a lot of places.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

Yes. No one could prove they were only one race because no one really knows.

Derek M
Derek M
3 years ago

Half Irish/half Indian, half Polish/half Nigerian…..what about us poor old fully British? I guess we are the foreigners in our own country now.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago

The future might be mixed race in Europe because of its proximity to Africa but it’s hard to believe that many places in Asia will be turning ‘black’ or even brown anytime soon. In fact, many Asian communities revere not just white skin but ‘poreless’ white skin. When my daughter modeled, the Japanese were fascinated by the quality of her skin. They would look at her up close, very close and marvel at its lucidity. Their avidness was something we had not witnessed before. Perhaps in the future, ‘whiteness’ a la the elfin fairies of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ will be a rarity but highly valued for its singular beauty?

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

What, like a pet?

Stephen Follows
Stephen Follows
3 years ago

I wouldn’t have said that any of the kids in the picture are mixed race.

Alex Wilkinson
Alex Wilkinson
3 years ago

Colourism will be eliminated when the white world stops being so much richer and more successful than everyone else

Academics will rationalise and sound academic, but this is toss.

I don’t know if the human race will ever be able to honest about it.

Andrew Best
Andrew Best
3 years ago

The future is mixed race?
Therefore as a white man I am the past and might as well just end my life now!

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Best

You don’t know everything about your ancestry, do you? Can you be sure that you are only one race?

Layla Kaylif
Layla Kaylif
3 years ago

I’m half arab/half english….I have no idea if that makes me white or mixed race.
I am certain it makes me totally bonkers.
https://laylakaylif.bandcam

Andrew Baldwin
Andrew Baldwin
3 years ago

“But what if Nigeria does not become as rich and successful as Denmark in the next 50 years, even as it heads towards becoming the most populous country on earth?” This clearly won’t happen. It is ridiculous to set the bar so ridiculously high. It doesn’t mean that Britons of Nigerian descent will do badly. My stepson is a huge fan of John Boyega. I do agree with Adekoya that Britain’s future is biracial or multiracial, as is Canada’s.

william83
william83
3 years ago

If “the future is mixed race” then look at South and Mid America and the fast changing USA to see what that future will be like.

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago

Mixed race is an excellent idea. Any one will tell you that prure beds are a problem – while mongrels are stronger , live longer, resist infection better, are more intelligent etc etc . I am half Irish and half Scots . If I could come back in another life I would like to add Jewish and Hindu to my make up.

Caroline Galwey
Caroline Galwey
3 years ago

Irish and Scots are essentially the same thing. Agree with you about hybrid vigour, though. Of my grandparents, one was Irish, one Cornish, one Austrian and one Bohemian.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago

Peoples have always mixed and there are no races according to modern genetics.