The Good Immigrant

by Nikesh Shukla

It is important to understand precisely what is being said there: the story that everyone can relate to, the character that we as an audience are supposed to be able to project ourselves onto with the most ease, the ‘universal’, is white. The default is always white. There are no vacancies in that spot – ever – for people of colour. No Nigerian-British everyman. No unexceptional Bangladeshi-British Joe Bloggs/Jaleel Begum. Characters of colour only make it into the mix specifically ‘when the role calls for it’. Let that sink in for a moment.

Traditions are just nonsense that binds, and whilst the nonsense might take on a different hue, the binding is universal.

The richest ones were always the most shabbily dressed: if a boy had holes in his sweater, he was more likely than not to be descended from some emperor.

I was tired, as one of the few black journalists writing with reasonable frequency for some of the country’s main publications, of being summoned by the media to defend the basic dignity of black people; of being called upon every single time a public figure said something flagrantly bigoted, or, as they or many of their softly cackling fans might put it, ‘provocative’. It felt more like bear-baiting than how the news ought to work.