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? If we all now perceive ourselves as different, abnormal or other, how can there be a normal left to differ from? And now that we have all started to take one another’s cultures and identities as our own so shamelessly and blatantly, I fear the whole point of such celebrations is being eroded.

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 evoke. While many would obviously have had parents or grandparents who emigrated from places like Jamaica or Ghana, 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, devoid I fear of any connection to the cultures it is supposed to celebrate. Two days of sound and fury in the gentrified streets of one of the worlds richest metropolises, essentially signifying nothing. Immigrants to this country and their descendants have every right to be proud of who they are, yet I feel the loud, overbearing parade of basically identical floats that I went to this afternoon isn’t the respectful thank you they deserve.