Quotes from David Baddiel

do this – and very large lines appeared across his forehead. His nostrils flared, becoming even wider holes than they already were. Speak-No, Hear-No and See-No

really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,

But at what point does that neglect—given that we live in a time when almost any microaggression against a minority can be flagged as racism—shade back into racism?

Anti-Semitism is a second-class racism.

This very subject—the inequity of offense that right-thinking people take around differing hate words—came up when a friend of mine, a man who very much would be thought of as a progressive, questioned me about this central premise of the film.

This very subject—the inequity of offense that right-thinking people take around differing hate words—came up when a friend of mine, a man who very much would be thought of as a progressive, questioned me about this central premise of the film. He said: but the Y-word isn't as bad as the N-word? I said: why not? He said: because Jews are rich.

biological mum

Jews, therefore, as far as progressives are concerned, don't represent anything outside of themselves. No victory is claimed by championing their experience, and this leads to a subtle—and unconscious—exclusion.

of a munchkin. And it took her so long to walk up the drive that, by the time she was actually inside the house, Alfie wondered if it was too late for his parents to go out.

Dad?" said Barry. "We're going home too. We'll follow them." "Right," said Barry, confused. The house was a long way away.

it is the prerogative of those on the receiving end of any specific racism to define that racism.

Mr Mann … Sorry, is that really your name?" "Yes," said Mr Mann, frowning. He was sitting opposite Mr Carter's desk. Miss Malik was next to him. "As in … like … Mister Man?" "Brian Mann is my name, yes. As I've said.

getting their bottom on the ceiling to plop upside down, and so, to get back into the moment, he repeated,

being white is not about skin color, but security. It means you are protected because you are a member of the majority culture.

But still: antiracists need to listen more to the enemy. Because antiracism only exists to fight racists; it only has meaning oppositionally. If there were no racists, there would be no antiracists. And the racists say: Jews are not white. The Nazis said it all the time—the project of the Jews, as far as they were concerned, was to undermine the Aryan white races. And the exclusion of Jews from the category of whiteness is still key to present-day white supremacists.

My soul fills quietly with the yellow gas of joy. I am to see Alice. I feel light returning, a sudden surge like a goal in extra-time; hope spreads in my heart like fridgeless Clover on white white bread. Even my cold toes become warm. Then I realise that Jezebel has been sick on my feet.

In his bedroom, Barry looked at himself in the mirror. He wasn't, it has to be said, entirely comfortable in the suit. Peevish had helped him put it on, which had felt a little weird as his mum and dad hadn't helped him dress for a long time. But then again he didn't normally wear suits. And certainly not shirts with cufflinks. And bow ties. Well, he had once worn a bow tie, to a party of

Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave.

Just as a particular racism can only really be defined by the victims of that racism, the deep truth of identity is only available to those who live that identity. Casting a non-minority actor to mimic that identity feels, to the progressive eye, like impersonation, and impersonation carries with it an element of mockery: or at least, it is reductive, lessening the complexity of that experience by channeling it through an actor who hasn't lived it.*

Derek. Or any other name that no boy had been called since 1953. Being called Barry was just one – although it was pretty near the top of the list – of the many things Barry blamed his parents (Susan and Geoff: go figure…) for.

Well, according to the law of Schrödinger's Whites, a brilliant conceit that I am not responsible for, in which Jews are white or non-white depending on the politics of the observer, in this context Krug's Jewishness enhances the story.

The sentiment might sound virtuous and true, but really it's just an attempt to widen the focus of the debate so as to lose the specificity of black concerns.

The Talmud is a book of exegesis of the Old Testament, codified in the fourteenth century and containing the basis of all the archaic rules and laws of Judaism:

What they tend to say is: we stand against antisemitism and all types of racism. As a mantra, this was heard again and again between 2015 and 2019, and continues to be in the ongoing arguments around Corbyn at the time of writing. It sounds good. It sounds right. But to these ears, the reflex need always to follow the phrase antisemitism with "and all types of racism" is the left's All Lives Matter.