The Observer last weekend carried a long article - part of an entire supplement on race - by Diran Adebayo, a young black novelist of Nigerian descent. Adebayo confessed that he is confused. I do not see why.

Britain is not confused. We are at war. There are troops on the ground in Afghanistan. People of colour are being slaughtered, and an entire country bombed - from subsistence agriculture to a dust bowl. Religion is at the centre of the war, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our inner cities are dissenters.

Only days ago, parliament imposed upon us the most ruthless, repressive legislation, including detention without trial. We can expect that quite a few Muslims will be under the most merciless surveillance. If I were Adebayo, I would avoid the mosque like the plague, unless he wishes to face the east five times a day with MI5, Special Branch and their informers.

No, this nation is not confused: it proceeds under the certainty of the hammer. All this turns the screw at the heart of race relations. My Pakistani friends are puzzled, terrified even, at the speed with which they have been drawn into this conflict. Nothing like this has happened in the field of race relations for the past 50 years. Tony Blair has laid out a new imperialism for Asia, Africa, the Caribbean - who knows where else - which is bound to disrupt the relations between ourselves and the indigenous populations. This is all crystal clear. There is nothing confusing. Race has always been at the core of British imperialism. We seem to be shifting to the edge of darkness.

But last weekend, I watched a programme by Roger Graef, a well-known broadcaster, on the police in Britain. The controversial decision by Commander Brian Paddick, head of the police in Lambeth (and therefore Brixton), not to pursue minor drug offences came too late to be included in the programme. Paddick knows his turf; he was here in the bad old days when every racial epithet was used in the brutal encounters between blacks and the police. He has concluded that any reappearance of the constant stopping and searching of blacks in Brixton will lead him to the most god almighty violence.

Yet blacks, too, have changed. They are tired of the smell of cordite and the dead bodies on pavements, and they are fearful of the young gunslingers. Only days ago, there was a funeral for a much-loved Brixton figure, known as Mr Roper, and 2,000 people attended, 99.9 per cent of them black. At the wake, officers abseiled through the windows as friends and relatives mourned. In the past, there would have been mayhem. But the police apologised and they got a tolerant response from the black community. Blacks were certain of their responsibilities and their place in this society. They were certainly not confused, and nor is Paddick.