The Atlantic

Perhaps the Most Effective Way to Fight Racism

The filmmaker Deeyah Khan is the latest anti-racist to enjoy success by engaging, rather than shunning, people with deplorable beliefs.
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

In White Right: Meeting the Enemy, the filmmaker Deeyah Khan, a Muslim woman of color, recounts a television interview she gave during the summer of 2016. “The fact of the matter is that the U.K. is never going to be white again,” she told the BBC. “Similarly, our parents who have left Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and other Muslim countries, for them to think that they can reestablish those countries and the lives that they had over here—it’s not gonna happen. We’re together going to have to find out: What does it mean to build a society that includes all of us?” A deluge of hate mail quickly followed.

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