Black is black? Not any more it isn’t

PEOPLE should be allowed to choose their race as wel l as their gender, according to a college lecturers’ union. They probably think they’re breaking new ground in extending the frontiers of diversity and inclusion. Sorry to disappoint them, but that’s so last year.

In November 2018, it was revealed that Anthony Lennon, a white theatre director, who was born in London and has two Irish parents, had managed to obtain an Arts Council grant reserved for ethnic minorities by claiming to be black.

Lennon, 54, told them he was a ‘ bornagain African’ and said he’d ‘gone through the struggles of a black man’. He even adopted an African name, Ekundayo. You couldn’t make it up. Predictably, the idea of choosing your own race started in America.

In 2015 it was revealed that a woman posing as an African-American, Rachel Dolezal, had been sacked from her job with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after her parents outed her as white. Ms Dolezal insisted on describing herself as ‘trans-black’.

Perhaps the most famous example is lilywhite Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who won a post at Harvard at a time when it was seeking to employ more people from ethnic minorities, describing herself as a Red Indian — sorry, Native American. This led to Donald Trump dubbing her ‘Pocahontas’.

It’s his best joke and one which he can’t resist repeating — especially after he goaded Senator Warren into taking a DNA test, which showed she was just 1,024th part Cherokee — a statistic that genealogists would describe as being well outside the margin of error. Warren subsequently had to issue an apology to the Cherokee nation.

The politics of identity is fraught with contradiction. For instance, how do you square a white man claiming to be black with the campaign against ‘cultural appropriation’?

Still, it could be a convenient ‘get out of jail’ card for the students accused of racism for wearing sombreros.

All they have to do is claim to be ‘trans-Mexican’ for the night and Pedro’s your uncle. And what if a white person wearing blackface insists they are actually black? Pick the bones out of that.

Back when Englishman Jack Charlton was manager of the Republic of Ireland football team, he managed to stretch the definition of ‘Irish’ to include anyone who’d drunk a pint of Guinness.

Four and a half years ago, I joked that if Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner — one of the extended Kardashian Klan — could claim to have ‘always been a woman’, despite still possessing a full set of wedding tackle and fathering six children, then I was Nigerian lesbian.

‘If you can choose your gender, why not your race?’ I wrote.

Under the new rules issued this week by the University and College Union, it appears you can. ‘The UCU has a long history of enabling members to self-identify, whether that is being black, disabled, LGBT or women.’

Hang on, I thought for a moment, self-identifying as ‘ disabled’ is a new one.

THEN I remembered that as recently as this summer, the Government extended the Blue Badge free parking permit scheme to people with ‘hidden disabilities’ such as anxiety and depression.

It reminded me of the brilliant Curb Your Enthusiam episode in which Larry David pretends to have a stammer in order to use the disabled toilet ahead of a man in a wheelchair.

Look, it’s easy to mock all this madness. But there is an upside, especially if you’re an employer.

Say you’ve got a predominently white, male workforce and you’re coming under pressure to hire more women and ethnic minorities.

Simply tell half your workforce to redefine as female, black, Muslim or whatever and you’re off the hook. Under the new diversity guidelines, no one will be able to complain.

Come to think of it, all this could be a godsend for the BBC.

If Gary Lineker can be persuaded to transition, it could solve the Beeb’s gender pay gap problems at a stroke.