I rarely take offence to racial insults levelled at me, usually because they are in jest. It’s one very confusing symptom of a post-post-post modern culture of irony and self-effacement that allows one white man to call a coloured man ‘chocolate bear’ out of nothing but affection. Some months after my exchange with the hairdresser had taken place, I was assigned a presentation by a tutor. It involved meeting another student to discuss a novel set in Kerala, in
Sunday 3 February 2008
Political correctness
Driven to extremes by poverty last term, I risked the campus hairdressers. I was assigned a perfectly pleasant young man who lived in Kenilworth and thought Leamington made an exotic night out. I hate hairdresser/dentist/builder chit-chat but this one was new and as yet not worn down by the tedium of student attempts at small-talk.
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