So much of the British reaction to the death of George Floyd has constituted a failure of nerve. Desperately seeking to assuage their feelings of guilt, to do something, many Britons have sacrificed their critical faculties to a narrative that does not actually help black people—a narrative that, by reducing us to passive abstractions, only makes us more invisible.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, critical theory may be all well and good but the evidence increasingly shows it is bringing about nothing positive for the groups it purports to fight for.