http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/11/a_conversation_with_zadie_smith_about_cultural_appropriation_male_critics.html

What other things have changed about the way you look at the world now? I don’t think I’m a particularly political person. I don’t have a political intelligence. My husband’s like that, I have lots of friends like that, but I’m not a political animal. When I’m looking around, I’m thinking intimately about people’s intimate life. That’s my business. Sometimes people’s intimate lives reflect the political world, but my first concern is always people. I think the pessimism, if there is one, it’s just as you get older it becomes more and more obvious to you that life is not a perfected art. It’s not that generation after generation everybody improves and becomes better, but that you move in these constant cycles. Something I’ve found personally and maybe it has some resonance politically is that progress is never permanent. That goes for the welfare state, that goes for personal progress in your life. You have to be continually reclaimed, restated, reargued.