Having shaken off nationalism, Europe risks civilisationalism

It is possible to be black and Dutch, or for a person of Moroccan descent to be unequivocally French. But is it possible to be non-white and to think of oneself as “European”? In most ways, certainly. Plenty of non-white people are born in Europe, and a citizen of any EU country is a citizen of the bloc, no matter what their ethnicity. Yet the term “European” is sometimes also used to connote whiteness: in apartheid-era South Africa, the terms were interchangeable. Those who think of Europe as a civic construction—a place underpinned by laws and values that people freely adhere to—can welcome anyone as a citizen. But of late some have tended to think of Europe in civilisational terms, an idea rooted not just in laws and institutions but in history, culture and identity. To be European in that meaning is to be of a place, to belong there, and therefore for others not to belong. That has unsettling implications for those who live in Europe yet do not look traditionally European. Might eight decades of EU integration accidentally foment a form of ugly, pan-continental bigotry?