Thread by @Okwonga

I am sharing this thread again on Priti Patel and "racial gatekeepers" since it seems to have struck a chord.

The ethos of the Racial Gatekeeper = my policies against [x] cannot be regressive, because I myself am of [x]. To escape my policies, [x] must be exceptional, like me.

https://twitter.com/Okwonga/status/1179089343782248449

The key thing to remember - having known people with Patel's worldview - is that being a Racial Gatekeeper is very lonely. It creates a genuine feeling that you are a member of a heroic and hounded minority, even though it is a membership of a cruel club you chose with relish.

The only way to evade the loneliness is to double down at every turn, to adopt views so extreme that that they startle even those you are trying to impress. You say the nastiest things you can with the biggest smile. Drawing fuel from adversity is all you have.

If you spend years doing that - surrounded by people who tell you that you're better than those [x], since unlike them you worked hard, raised yourself up - you begin to believe your myth, to buy into your sense of destiny. But the people who surround you are still afraid of you.

I keep thinking about how Sajid Javid interrupted his family holiday to chase migrants away from the UK border, and how - even though he proved his anti-migrant credentials - Trump shunned him on his UK visit. That is an utterly miserable - and wholly predictable - outcome.

(The irony is that if, say, as a black person, I tried to please a white supremacist by saying "I am better than those other black people", the white supremacist would silently despise me even more. Identity is *everything* to them. They would think "he is ashamed of who he is".)

The tragedy of Racial Gatekeepers like Priti Patel is that your game is eternally rigged. You can support every hard-right and far-right policy that crosses your desk, you can even propose some of your own, but you can never, ever hate enough to please people who hate you.

/end