Racism, for me as a white dude who has never experienced it, has always seemed pretty dumb.

I mean, I get it. It’s much easier to generalise people based on certain characteristics rather than having critical and meaningful opinions of them. It must be comforting for a white supremacist to say ‘all black people are less than me,’ while getting beaten by someone who is their obvious physical superior.

Likewise, ‘all Asians are bad drivers’ requires less brain power than dealing with one particular bad driver who happens to be Asian. That would involve treating every person like an individual, each with positive and negative traits that require nuanced thinking to analyse.

I find racism weird because it only works in a colour vacuum. In order for me to maintain a hatred of a particular shade of human, I need to avoid interacting with them; otherwise, as mentioned above, I’ll find one I like.

I’ve never tried being a Nazi, but it must be hard work to avoid other races in today’s multicultural society. How inconvenient would it be if you popped into a cafe only to be served by a friendly, happy and helpful brown person? I just wanted an espresso, not to have my oversimplified worldview challenged.

The racist people I’ve met seem to have one thing in common — they’ve got a detailed hypothesis. I remember a simpler time when someone could hate another person because of the colour of their skin. Now, I have to sit through a ten-minute thought exercise on DNA and genetic predispositions and a scientific study that was done in the 60’s even though nobody can find it online.

We are told to reject hate, to say no to bigotry and to fight division. But I don’t wanna. I think these things are bad, but I also feel like being racist is the modern equivalent of being afraid of witches — the fact that we haven’t moved on yet is ridiculous.

There are so many better things to hate people for: having a phone conversation on the train using the loudspeaker, walking in the middle of a busy footpath, or wearing white sunglasses. If you do these things, I will hate you, not because of the colour of your skin which is a broad generalisation but because of what you are doing. It’s a personal hate, which is much better.

Let us not say ‘no’ to hate — let us not care about skin colour, religion or whatever and instead focus on a higher level of hatred: one directed at individuals.