Well, it's quite interesting that Ms Iman was a Brexit Party candidate for Leeds North East, so hardly apolitical.
Also interestingly, in an essay/article she wrote in 2017 she seemed to have a very different take on the issue of racism:
" Like many other black people, for a long time I felt cheated - no matter what I achieved or how hard I strived I could not escape the structural oppression associatiated with "blackness".
She said her mother was highly educated, and she herself attended private schools and boarding school at secondary level but later moved to a local school. She quotes her new headmaster as saying, when she said she was nervous starting a new school:
"There are plenty of black people here, don't you worry".
Given that sort of comment, the division across racial lines that she found in the local school is hardly surprising, neither is the commonplace racism that she experienced. She says she "longed for acceptance" and, perhaps because of these feelings of loneliness and alienation, she began finding out a lot more about her Yoruba heritage and "found pride and stability with it".
She concludes: "It shows that even relatively privileged black people struggle to escape the constraints of racism. We are seen as being a skin colour before we are seen as a person."
It then seems rather perverse of her to be lauding the great strides that have been made in race relations over the last decades. Perhaps, given her upper middle class family background and a good educational grounding, including university, the issue of being black is not now so significant for her as it continues to be for others. As she says, class is also a major issue, but if you are working class and black you have two sets of prejudices to contend with instead of one.
I think to say "some argue that the appeal of a colour blind society is is in itself a racist idea" and "we should emphasize racial difference and think along racial lines" is a misrepresentation. Given all the negative stereotypes that black people have experienced, it may be seen as important to recognise and celebrate your race rather than be made to feel ashamed of it.
She goes on to say that there is now a growing movement which puts forward the idea that "every aspect, every facet and every detail of our lives, history and culture are explicitly or implicitly complicit in racism" and that there are now "hierarchies of victimhood" - the higher in this hierarchy you are, the more superior you are.
I think she misrepresents by exaggeration these so-called "woke" ideas (I do hate that word). Undoubtedly the UK (and many other countries) has a history of the most cruel and inexcusable racism from which we have all benefited. We are not to blame for what has happened historically but we are complicit in that racism if we continue to deny its current existence and to celebrate the British Empire and the people who helped to maintain its power and influence by means of subjugation and exploitation.
Perhaps Ms Iman saw it as a sign she had finally been accepted when she was given the opportunity to stand as a (failed) candidate for the Brexit Party in Leeds North East - that her colour was finally irrelevant. Some might think that, rather than being "colour blind", the Brexit Party would have found her a particularly suitable candidate to distance itself from UKIP, which even Farage had said he could no longer support because of its racism. Or perhaps she reached the conclusion that if you, as a black person, took a contrary view on the issue of racism, you would corner a "niche" market and be more able to further your journalistic ambitions.
