When it comes to race and the left – certainly the wealthy white left, definitely the middle-class left – it is as if left-wingers have not progressed since being unceremoniously exposed as a type by Tom Wolfe, in his mammoth essay, ‘Radical Chic’, over half a century ago. Other writers also had their number, including black authors James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. The event Wolfe documents may not be familiar to a rising generation charting similar territory as chic revolutionaries on social media. It’s therefore worth providing a summary here. In the season of radical chic, as Wolfe refers to it, super-rich celebrities and socialites were indulging in a political cocktail of nostalgie de la boue and noblesse oblige, by staging fundraising parties – where sumptuous hors d’oeuvre were served – at New York duplexes on Park Avenue. Their pet causes were those raised by ethnic groups who were politicised – often rightfully so – by grievances that needed airing, axes that needed grinding.
