I think there are many things at play here. Like most things now you are either for or against. You either take a knee or you’re racist, you either post on Facebook all the books about racism you’ve hurriedly down loaded onto your kindle or you’re racist, comment on mass gatherings in the middle of a pandemic and you’re racist, show any support for the UK police, you’re racist.
Racism isn’t usually on a lot of people’s radars, around 3% of the U.K. population is black (I think around another 8% are non-white). The majority of people don’t really consider racism on a day to day basis, rightly or wrongly. All of a sudden the majority are faced with the issue of racism, some will use it as an opportunity to Truely educate themselves, maNy others won’t Give a fuck but use it as an opportunity to gain social media likes/display their appalling wokeness, others will feel attacked (phrases like white privilege are very unhelpful here), mob rule removing cultural monuments, generalisations about white people, there’s been a lot of aggressive rhetoric around on both sides, things are very heated. Any attempted debate is shot down.
It’s very difficult to know what the answer is, but in order to move forward I think there needs to be a lot more understanding on both sides. I also think things like cultural appropriation don’t help, most see it as fucking ridiculous and just further divides people. People who see traditions that they love being attacked, people don’t really understand the history And the way history is usually taught so get upset over things changing. People who also feel they form part of a group which has been victimised get annoyed that their plight is not on ITV every night.
Humans are by their nature tribal, they are therefore usually drawn to others who are similar. Most successful integration of different social groups throughout history is through assimilation-yet everything I see now is about dividing groups.