What is the significance of race?

In the current moment, you have no choice but to confront it

Significance is a funny thing. You may think something is of no interest or consequence to you personally, but if everyone arounds you sees it differently, then you will have to engage with it, devote your attention to it, in other words treat it as significant.

Something like this is going on with race at the moment.

At the Rethinking Race conference that I wrote about here last week, the former Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Phillips said he was shocked to find one of the most senior civil servants in the land proudly brandishing a copy of Robyn DiAngelo’s White Fragility when they met recently.* (*It may have been boasted about it, I’m not sure if I recall accurately).