Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

by Reni Eddo-Lodge

If feminism can understand the patriarchy, it’s important to question why so many feminists struggle to understand whiteness as a political structure in the very same way.

The politics of whiteness transcends the colour of anyone’s skin. It is an occupying force in the mind. It is a political ideology that is concerned with maintaining power through domination and exclusion.

Being a feminist with a race analysis means seeing clearly how race and gender are intertwined when it comes to inequalities.

When we tell ourselves that misogyny is simply an import from overseas, we are saying that it’s just not a problem here.

Both obsessively focus on a woman’s looks and how covered or uncovered her body is in determining her value, as though her body belongs to a male gaze before it belongs to her.

Feminism, at its best, is a movement that works to liberate all people who have been economically, socially and culturally marginalised by an ideological system that has been designed for them to fail.

The angry black woman cannot be reasoned with. She argues back. She is not docile, sweet or agreeable, like expectations of white femininity.

To believe in emasculation, you have to believe that masculinity is about power, and strength, and dominance.

Not only does the three-tiered class hierarchy no longer really exist, but it looks like existing race inequalities are compounded rather than erased by class inequalities.

many consider their class to be about their preferred culture and politics, rather than their relationship to assets and wealth.

The same report found that the higher your income, the more likely you are to think that immigrants are a drain on public services.

But immigration blamers encourage you to point to your neighbour and convince yourself that they are the problem, rather than question where wealth is concentrated in this country, and exactly why resources are so scarce.

Even if you work really hard and find yourself at the top of your game, there will be a debate about whether this has happened because of your race, or despite it.

There’s nothing more threatening to some than the redistribution of cultural capital.

some deal with class prejudice, others deal with racialised class prejudice.

think the people who want to skip to an end point are the ones not really affected by the issues,’

Solidarity is nothing but self-satisfying if it is solely performative.

The perverse thing about our current racial structure is that it has always fallen on the shoulders of those at the bottom to change it. Yet racism is a white problem. It reveals the anxieties, hypocrisies and double standards of whiteness. It is a problem in the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve. You can only do so much from the outside.

Attempting to challenge the racism deemed acceptable in political discussion is tacitly tolerated, but making white people feel uncomfortable is impermissible.