I consider myself liberal, unprejudiced, unbiased. In my capacity as a teacher in a successful academy, I have excellent relationships with pupils from a wide range of ethnic, racial, economic and gendered backgrounds; why, one could almost call us diverse. I am a South African emigrant whose teenage brother died as a result of the brutality and rigidity of the apartheid regime. But I am also white, female, possibly middle class, and I read and teach “the mainstream”. Hanif Kureishi’s intemperate, biased, prejudiced and vicious traducing of the “knuckle-draggers” who “whine” about the “dilution of their culture” (The whining about diversity is driven by fear and ignorance, 16 June) has astonished and upset me, despite my agreeing in principle with the points put forward. His own entitled whining, his thrilling to his own shrill tone, is divisive and unnecessary; yes, “white Oxbridge men” are easy targets, but others feel caught up in his vitriol, and resent it.
Perhaps he would like to visit our school, and climb off his high horse for a few hours.
Linda Calvey
Northampton
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