Time’s arrow turns
Minorities used to feel their progress was unstoppable. No longer
Ahir Shah
As a self-styled progressive and socially-styled second-generation immigrant, witnessing recent political developments has been sobering. (Albeit in a way that makes actual sobriety next to impossible.) What once felt like my optimistic assumptions for the future now appear dangerously naïve; battles I thought my parents and grandparents had successfully fought and won seem as though they will have to be relitigated; my beliefs about the country I live in have come into stark conflict with the reality.
Importantly, this is in no way what I was promised. I am a 20-something, left-leaning member of an ethnic minority; I had been reliably informed by the Daily Mail that I was taking over. I am normally thrilled when the Mail is proven wrong, if only because it saves me from believing that everything in a threemile radius of my flat has been engineered to give me cancer, but in this instance its inaccuracy has been galling.