Despite being demonised by all right-think­ing peo­ple, racism, per­ceived or oth­er­wise, is arguably the most per­sis­tent area of offence in West­ern soci­ety. Over­com­ing it requires accept­ing that it comes in degrees rang­ing from unac­cept­able to beyond the pale, and if every­thing is apoc­a­lyp­tic, noth­ing is.

The gov­ern­ing imper­a­tive is the del­i­cate bal­ance of judg­ing whether a per­ceived trans­gres­sion is delib­er­ate and deserv­ing of some form of pun­ish­ment, or an exam­ple of thought­less­ness or igno­rance bet­ter coun­tered by rea­son­able cas­ti­ga­tion and an attempt at enlightenment.
The cur­rent furore over a for­mer Lady-in-Wait­ing to the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II point­ed­ly ask­ing a black, Eng­lish-born guest at a func­tion, where she “real­ly” came from is a clear exam­ple. The guest in ques­tion, Ngozi Fulani, whose par­ents are from Bar­ba­dos, made her indig­na­tion pub­lic on Twit­ter. She stressed that “I’m very proud of my African her­itage”, and went on to add that she felt like she was being asked to “denounce my British citizenship”. 
Leav­ing aside the fact that Ms Fulani’s cho­sen name and wardrobe are dis­tinct­ly of African ori­gin (and have been described by detrac­tors as “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion”), I’m not sure how that adds up, but she took offence, so there’s no point argu­ing about it.
It was, how­ev­er, a far cry from being sub­ject­ed to vit­ri­olic racial epi­thets, or the rit­u­alised and aggres­sive hatred of sports “fans” who throw banana skins and shout mon­key chants at Black play­ers on oppos­ing teams, for example. 
That seems to me to make the case that the inci­dent was one that pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reply with reproof and edu­ca­tion. Damn­ing it on Twit­ter instant­ly stamped the impri­matur of racism at its worst. 
The swift, and one has to accept as sin­cere, apol­o­gy of the per­pe­tra­tor Lady Susan Hussey, was over-rid­den by even hasti­er indig­nant huffs and self-right­eous puffs of sup­port for one side and out­right con­dem­na­tion of the other.
Even top-rank­ing mem­bers of the British Roy­al Fam­i­ly, who of all peo­ple ought to know the dan­gers of rush­ing to judge­ment, joined the jeer­ing, albeit in a cul­tured tone. (Buck­ing­ham Palace described Lady Hussey’s ques­tion as “unac­cept­able and deeply regret­table”.)

                      SHALLOW AND SELECTIVE

There was no pause on any side to reflect on two uncom­fort­able facts: Twit­ter by its very nature doesn’t lend itself to con­text or nuance, and charges of racism can be high­ly selective.
 Ita­mar Ben-Gvir, an ultra-nation­al­ist politi­cian known for his anti-Arab com­ments, with a past con­vic­tion for racism, is tipped to become nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter in Israel’s next coali­tion gov­ern­ment. That he’s a fol­low­er of the late, explic­it­ly racist, ultra-nation­al­ist Meir Kahane, whose organ­i­sa­tion was banned in Israel and des­ig­nat­ed as a ter­ror­ist group by the Unit­ed States how­ev­er, doesn’t seem to mat­ter, or gar­ner much shame. If Mr Ben-Gvir gets the job, what’s the bet any objec­tions from Israel’s allies will car­ry caveats that let them avoid puni­tive actions?
On a more every­day lev­el, isn’t forc­ing some­one to choose how they “iden­ti­fy”, at least in the case of “black or white”, a form of racism?
And yet, a dis­cernible touch of “black blood” (if you elect to cat­e­gorise by appear­ance), appar­ent­ly means a per­son can, indeed must, “iden­ti­fy” as “black”, but it takes a com­plete lack of it to be con­sid­ered “white”.
By way of con­trast, in Cana­da, to claim “Treaty Sta­tus”, mean­ing you are of Indige­nous ori­gin and have a right to call your­self such under what­ev­er pos­i­tives accrue from the Indi­an Act, requires proof of ances­try. How you look, talk or “iden­ti­fy” doesn’t count.
Con­sid­er­ing the rights that were tak­en from, and long-denied First Nations peo­ple, that seems fair enough.
I’ve nev­er done a DNA or ances­try check, but to the best of my knowl­edge, I’m so white the only claim I could make to being black is my pride in being addressed as “my broth­er” by black col­leagues I call friends. (NOTE: they use the full word, not the ubiq­ui­tous ‘bro’).
How­ev­er, I am also: shades of brown with a tan, mul­ti­ple hues rang­ing from pink to crim­son from sun­burn, tinged with vary­ing oth­er shades of red when blush­ing, pur­ple or puce with rage, green with envy, flushed with fever, yel­low with jaun­dice and blue with cold.
I think that’s grounds for “iden­ti­fy­ing” as “rain­bow”.
But then again, I’m also not South African, so maybe claim­ing “rain­bow” is “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion” of the won­der­ful cat­e­go­ry Nel­son Man­dela used to help unite a nation divid­ed by apartheid into a pletho­ra of racial cat­e­gories that would be hilar­i­ous, were they not so abhor­rent and hurtful.
In case the face­tious and mar­gin­al­ly satir­i­cal bits of that aren’t clear: I find racism, anti-Semi­tism and any­thing that smacks of either, repugnant.
I also believe there are times and instances when, to para­phrase one of the best-known lines from Ham­let: “Some peo­ple doth protest too much, methinks”.

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