This essay, on the contemporary obsession with whiteness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 7 August 2022, under the headline “Beneath the skin of our obsession with whiteness lie deeper fears about our place in the world”. It is Viktor Orbán’s worst nightmare: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” It is the opening line to Mohsin Hamid’s new novel The Last White Man, a line that deliberately echoes […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: critical race theory, derrick bell, franz kafka, identity politics, mohsin hamid, racism, ta-nehisi coates, the last white man, viktor orban, white identity, whiteness