I even love the silly stories we cling to about ourselves, but I am old enough to know they are fairy stories. I know the “true” English religion is paganism or druidism, not the middle-eastern religion of Christianity which was brought here by our conquerors. I also know St George was born in Palestine, and like Jesus, had dark skin. I know St George never came to England, and is the patron saint of many countries, including Ethiopia and Palestine.

There is no definitive list of traits that makes someone English; we are all so very different from each other, even those of us who look similar. And thank heaven for that! Our nation and culture are constantly changing, they always have, and always will. We cannot capture a nostalgic picture and preserve it, and would be foolish to try.

For me, I love living in an ever-changing world, and the only thing I find hard to live alongside is intolerance. I hope I’m humble enough to remember that not one part of the planet really belongs to anyone, and in England we’ve got far too used to taking more than our fair share. It’s time we showed love and acceptance of all our amazing differences and stopped being scared that not everyone is like us. It’s also time we learned to share this world with others because it is not ours; we are merely caretakers for the future.

But what we fail to recognise is that his very existence is our responsibility; that he is a manifestation of the shadow that is creeping across all of us. Black and white, we’re all getting more racist. You only have to see how the QT audience united over the problem of immigration to see this. All races of British citizens seemed suddenly united. Yes, we may be one of the richest countries on earth, but we don’t want to share. Yes, population here might be rising slower than elsewhere, but still there is no room here for more people. Yes, we may be influencing the world’s plight in fundamental ways both financial and political, but we still want to feel we are living in an ivory tower and be protected from what is going on “out there” as if it has nothing to do with us. No, we’re not all in this together, it’s every human, or country, for itself.

Denial, blame, projection, scapegoating, all pretty normal human behaviours prior to having the gumption to take hold of our own problems and deal with them. If we’re going to deal with our problems, it’s just no good making a scapegoat of the most vulnerable members of society – be they immigrants who are simply trying to make a better life for themselves or flee impossible conditions in their own countries, or, for that matter, be they emotionally disadvantaged and hard-of-thinking white people who have been drawn into nasty racist politics because they really don’t know any better.

It’s up to those of us with a brain or a heart to demonstrate a better understanding of the issues facing our generation, rather than letting ourselves be led by a ubiquitous worldwide propaganda that encourages us to be distracted from the real issues. We have allowed ourselves slowly to be drawn into a racist debate. All of us. “I’m not racist, but I’m worried about Islam because it oppresses women”. “I’m not racist, but I’m worried about immigration”. I hear my friends, my right-on, Guardian-reading friends, say stuff like this all the time, and I think that actually they are being racist, albeit unintentionally. So let’s have a reality check.

Hideous as 9/11 was, the planes did not fly into a Christian church, or a feminist school, but into a potent symbol of global capitalism. The debate about Islamic fundamentalism has mainly sprung up since then, as we seek to justify the revenge deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. As we can now clearly see, fundamentalism pops up in any culture from time to time, and puts forward a caricature of what that culture as a whole believes. I hope the rest of the world is not judging us all by the words of Nick Griffin the way we make blanket judgements of Islam; I hope that no-one is planning to bomb Britain back into the dark ages to deter the rise of the next Hitler.

Okay, so this is what you already know if you have a brain: We all come from Africa, so the colours of our skins have always changed and will always change over time, and all of us are a delightful genetic mix, which is what keeps us healthy. We don’t all become the same when we mix, we keep diversifying, and an all-white population would actually become genetically stagnant and in-bred.

The world population is increasing alarmingly, and soon there won’t be enough to go round. Western populations are more stable because our lives are stable and secure – breeding is something human beings do more of when they are living in poverty or insecure circumstances. As is clinging to extreme ideas, becoming insular and tribal and inward-looking. The solution? Simple, be more generous and tolerant to one another. It’s the only thing we can do that won’t make things worse.

If we want Britain to thrive, if we want to move out of this fear, we make immigrants welcome; help them feel secure, and stable, and part of something new. We let them have their own cultures because in doing so they see the benefit of being part of another culture as well. We stop accusing them of taking our jobs if they work and sponging if they don’t, because each of them is also buying from our shops and helping our economy just by being here. We have compassion for where they’ve come from and why they came here because most of us know how it feels to move somewhere new to give ourselves more peace, prosperity, happiness and security. In fact, we should actively help them attain what they came here to find, because that will enrich our communities in every possible sense, and help avoid the problems we believe stem from immigration but are actually a result of the effects of racism and intolerance. And while we’re at it, we should offer the same support and compassion to people who already live here; especially those who have failed to make the transition from industrial to post-industrial society smoothly.

And then we should address what is happening in the rest of the world. See how our own choices can affect Africa, India, China . . . see how we manage to convince ourselves that it is okay for us to be consuming the lion’s share of the world’s resources. See how we are lulled to sleep by the whisperings of media propaganda that teaches us that the real problem is not that a few very wealthy and powerful people now cynically order the world’s affairs for their own ends, the real problem is Islam, the real problem is immigrants, the real problem next week may very well be you and me.