What is the point of events celebrating cultural diversity in an era when the notion of diversity is being rendered increasingly meaningless? If the Notting Hill Carnival is supposed to be a celebration of the immigrant or outsider, having begun as a celebration of Afro-Caribbean migration into postwar Britain, now that everyone has assumed the role of the sociocultural outsider, could it have lost its point? After all , the vast majority of people attending carnival today would have come from London, and I daresay would never have actually experienced the exotic African or Caribbean cultures that they were trying to imitate. While many would obviously have had parents or grandparents who emigrated from places like Jamaica or Ghanaian, the vast majority of carnival goers today would have been born and educated in the affluent suburbs of London. A celebration of immigration and diversity has become a cacophony of horns and electronic music played so loudly that nobody can hear the lyrics. Two days of sound and fury in the gentrified streets of one of the worlds richest metropolises, essentially signifying nothing.