Andrew Sullivan on Sunak

[George K]

The British Barack Obama?

Sunak is, for example, an openly practicing and proud Hindu. He lit Diwali lights around 11 Downing Street and took his oath on the Bhagavad Gita. That’s not someone running from his heritage. And he is also a Brexiteer from conviction, and, unlike Truss, a fiscal conservative who’s a realist about what can and can’t be done in a period of extraordinary economic stress for Brits and massive post-Covid debt.

All of this suggests something too many liberals have forgotten. These countries of alleged “white supremacy” have less racism than almost anywhere else in the world. It is hard to imagine a non-white president of France or Germany or Italy — let alone China or Russia or anywhere in Central Europe. It is hard to think of another empire that was deliberately unwound by its architects, and who then, within two generations, installed the grandson of former colonial subjects to its most powerful office. And Obama, of course, was twice elected with more heartland white support than Hillary Clinton.

Sunak has, moreover, been selected by the Tory party — that bastion of alleged bigotry that has already had three female prime ministers in its history, and now also a non-white man, James Cleverly, as foreign secretary, and a woman of Indian ancestry, Suella Braverman, as home secretary. Three of the top four ministers of state in Sunak’s cabinet are non-white. The new chairman of the Conservative party is Nadhim Zahawi. I’m telling you this because the US MSM — who are usually obsessed with racial representation in every single mundane situation — suddenly aren’t that interested, when some of their woke priors are rattled.

This is true of the broader American left. A faction obsessed with racial “equity” cannot take a moment to observe a historical moment of extraordinary proportions. Some, like Trevor Noah, have even completely invented a racist “backlash” against Sunak that simply hasn’t happened, apart from one call on one radio call-in show. (I was on BBC Radio this morning talking to an interviewer who was simply baffled by the projection.)

Noah has the excuse of being a comedian. But the New York Times’ coverage has been almost as ludicrously slanted as its usual coverage of post-Brexit Britain, and it quickly ran two op-eds by British leftists trashing Sunak. Every story that refers to his ethnicity always slams his class “privilege” — i.e. that his parents were middle-class children of immigrants. This morning, the paper ran another hit-piece on Sunak’s wealth. The only benefit of his Indian ancestry appears to be that he will help the Indian diaspora in Britain itself. The incredible arc of imperial history finally coming full circle? Barely a mention.

I suspect this is because all these achievements are on the political right, which the NYT cannot quite compute, and because all these Tory minority figures rose without “equity” schemes, or “affirmative action,” or all the other euphemisms now deployed to describe active discrimination. They rose on merit, not equity. They dispel and disprove the lie of “white supremacy” in Britain and the US. They show instead that the two Anglophone allies are among the countries with the most opportunity for racial minorities in the world.

[Doctor Phibes]

I notice that he’s carefully avoided mentioning the mayor of London Sadiq Khan in that article.

Yes, yes, it’s not as important a position. Still…

Incidentally, the first black mayor of London was elected in 1772! Not a lot of people know that.

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Andrew Sullivan on Sunak:

I notice that he’s carefully avoided mentioning the mayor of London Sadiq Khan in that article.

True.

But Barack Obama had more importance as a symbol than, say Harold Washington or Lori Lightfoot. I'll bet more than half the country doesn't know who those people were/are.