Reggie: or, a hypothetical case of cultural appropriation  | thearticle

“Reggie Nadelson is a New York Jew.” That is how I intended to start this piece. Simple, clear, concise English, as Orwell recommended. It had the added advantage of being true. And it was

sufficiently blunt to catch the reader’s attention. (You can tell I spent my working life as a hack.) Then I thought again. These are weasel times. Books are “cancelled” before publication

and journalists sacked for “unconscious bias” or similarly unconscious “micro-aggressions”. So “New York Jew” sounds dangerously patronising or, even worse, racist. As I feel at home in New

York and Tel Aviv, as well as London, admire Zionism and have a long standing affection for the Jewish people, that was not the image I wanted to project. What to do? Finally I remembered

the witty word play offered up decades ago by the young Jonathan Miller. “I don’t really think of myself as a Jew. It’s more that I’m Jewish”. (I paraphrase.) So here we go again. Reggie

Nadelson is a Jewish New Yorker. Born and bred. A feisty New Yorker at that, and a respected author and journalist. Now lives part-time in London. Our paths crossed on the _Guardian_ and

then the _Independent_. Reggie has, over 20 years, written a series of intelligent and entertaining noirish thrillers about the exploits of Archie Cohen, a Jewish private eye, in tough,

downmarket Manhattan, some decades ago. Later Reggie wrote _Manhattan 62_, which I have just re-read as a lockdown treat. It is a humdinging Soviet spy story, set in the city. I like it a

lot. It captures the edgy mood of the city she knows so well, during the run up to the Cuban missile crisis, and the final seven days of terror as the crisis burst upon us. (I was living in

New York at the time.) And it portrays the constant friction between Jewish, Irish and Italian New Yorkers. All this makes for a jolly good read. But Reggie is lucky to have written

_Manhattan 62_ more than a decade ago. Most of the reputable (i.e. cowardly) publishers in New York or London to would need a lot of persuasion to handle it today. (Ask Julie Burchill or JK

Rowling for their experiences.)  So what is the problem with Reggie’s thoughtful, well-informed and well-written thriller? Well, it breaks all the rules of the latest pathetic manifestation

of virtue signalling – cultural appropriation. Usually racial but sometimes sexual. This is the rule which says that I can’t wear a kilt (not that I have any desire to do so, given my

knobbly knees) in case it upsets sensitive Scots. Or that young British women, white or Asian, must not have their hair in cornrows and braids because that is a style “possessed” by those of

African or Caribbean descent. So this new form of cultural segregation is what Martin Luther King and so many other civil rights martyrs died for? I think not. King, you may remember, said

movingly at the great March on Washington back in 1962 that he had a dream of the day when people would be judged “not by the  the colour of their skin but by the content of their

character”. And certainly not by their cornrows and braids or their Mandela-style shirts. Most of this cultural appropriation posturing is relatively trivial – unless, of course, you are

being seriously shamed and humiliated by semi-literate trolls for some imagined slight. But when cultural appropriation threatens novel writing – as it increasingly does – it is a serious

matter. Novelists are no longer supposed to write stories about people of other ethnicities. They are not to explore the culture or the emotions of people other than their own kind. White

writers can no longer project themselves into black minds. Men are not expected to write about the problems and joys of being a woman. Women must not attempt to write about men’s feelings.

(Yes, we have feelings too.) Straights must not appropriate gayness. On and on it goes. Now consider the – hypothetical – cultural appropriation case against Reggie Nadelson. The main

character in _Manhattan 62_ is an NYPD detective, Pat Wynne. Not merely is he a male Pat, and not a female Pat. He is an Irish male Pat. And here I introduce a new element. One that, so far,

I have kept hidden for dramatic effect. Just as Pat is a New York Irish man, so Reggie is a New York Jewish woman (_pictured_)  – though one who seems to like androgynous first names.  Be

that as it may. . . gender and ethnicity. They constitute two marks against Reggie. But there is more to come. The third mark against Reggie is the fact that the book is not just about Pat.

It is actually written from his point of view, in the first person. “I”, rather than the third person “he”. The female Jewish Reggie has for the purposes of the novel dared to appropriate,

or become, the male Irish Pat. We are far too late to stop publication of this politically incorrect outrage. It hit the book shops eight years ago. But perhaps the witch hunters should

arrange a public book burning. But one thing is for sure. The arsonists will not get my copy. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle.

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