Is black passe and is ethnic ambiguity the future? Don't believe such nonsense

I was away in the Caribbean when the Observer published a feature headlined: "Forget black, forget white. EA is what's hot". There is, we are told, a Generation EA. And what does EA abbreviate? Ethnically ambiguous. And who are these people? All seven of my children and three grandchildren.

Mrs Howe is of mixed race. I am not. She was an activist in the Black Unity and Freedom Party, I in the Black Panther movement. These apparently make us both irrelevances from a colour-coded past.

The author of the Observer piece, John Arlidge, began with the race issue in the US. Old leaders such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Jesse Jackson are passe, now transcended by a new leadership with the R&B singer Beyonce at the helm. Arlidge explains that she wears her hair blonde (horse hair in a weave though it is), a sure sign that black is dead. It is the first time in the history of black America that a pop star has been so upgraded, placed at the head of a historical movement. Not even James Brown ("Say it loud/I'm black and I'm proud") managed such a feat.

Then Arlidge moves to my own turf, Brixton. He takes us to a nightclub, the Plan B Bar, where a colourless EA crowd dances on a Friday night to Beyonce. He collects from this mild-mannered, coloured middle class - which amounts to only a handful in our society - soundbites stating that racial distinction belongs to a crude past.

Well, I'll be sugared! Just yards away, Arlidge would have discovered a place called Mass. Hundreds of proletarian blacks overflow from three rooms in a throbbing jam. Bashment is the main musical statement, accompanied by hardcore garage, and the dress code is international, urban, working-class black. You will find it in Soweto, Port of Spain, Barbados, New York, Toronto and many other places. You will find such clubs in London, from Hackney to Brixton, from Notting Hill to Croydon. Here, black is real.

Arlidge says that soon the mixed-race posse will be in the majority. He quotes Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, who has said that when his daughters walk through a door, black is only one of the things that are seen. Sorry: when my girls enter any space, the fact that they are black women dominates. Ethnically ambiguous, my foot!

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