At a recent debate in east London about Labour’s ability to attract minority-ethnic voters, the former Conservative candidate Ali Miraj spoke with passion about the barriers facing “Black and Brown” people. We still face discrimination in the workplace in terms of low pay and poor opportunities, he conceded, but he refused to call this “structural racism”. Critical race theory – which he did not bother to define – was also lambasted for perpetuating a lack of agency among those who adhere to it.
Miraj is not the first person on the right of the political spectrum to express disdain for critical race theory. Speaking in parliament during Black History Month in 2020 – the same year that the African American George Floyd was murdered by the white police officer Derek Chauvin – Kemi Badenoch, the then minister for women and equalities, condemned critical race theory as representing an ideology that “sees my blackness as victimhood and […] whiteness as oppression”.
