Five years ago, following the murder of George Floyd, a ‘racial reckoning’ shook the West. For some it was a time for our part of the world to come to terms with the reality of racism and to address the legacy of white supremacy. For others the protests following Floyd’s death poured petrol on the fire of the culture wars; racial divisions became reified and Britain was intellectually colonised by our American overlords in a spectacle of futile kneeling, black squares, virtue signalling and gesture politics. What I saw during that period, however, was the ghost of Malcolm X, haunting our times like Banquo at the feast. He was born 100 years ago this year, and his legacy is worth reconsidering during this Black History Month.
In an article in May, the Times columnist and Conservative p