Reflecting on her own experience of growing up in an ethnic minority family in the UK, Shabnam Nasimi wonders whether the categories of identity politics are holding people back rather than helping them:
I’ve always been suspicious of what I see as orthodoxies around certain cultural issues. I have found that “multiculturalism,” which was meant to be about equality and fairness and liberating people from oppression, has become quite a rigid and oppressive ideology. It has tended to box people into categories and worked against harmonious relationships between them, dividing communities. It’s possible to acknowledge racism still exists without over-exaggerating its modern significance.