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

by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Worse still is the white person who might be willing to entertain the possibility of said racism, but who thinks we enter this conversation as equals. We don’t.

With the rapid advancement in technology transforming how we live – leaps and bounds being taken in just decades rather than centuries – the past

has never felt so distant. In this context, it’s easy to view slavery as something Terrible, that happened A Very Long Time Ago. It’s easy to convince yourself that the past has no bearing on how we live today. But the Abolition of Slavery Act was introduced in the British Empire in 1833, less than two hundred years ago. Given that the British began trading in African slaves in 1562, slavery as a British institution existed for much longer than it has currently been abolished – over 270 years.

We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power.

The covert nature of structural racism is difficult to hold to account. It slips out of your hands easily, like a water-snake toy. You can’t spot it as easily as a St George’s flag and a bare belly at an English Defence League march. It’s much more respectable than that.

There are swathes of evidence to suggest that your life chances are obstructed and slowed down if you are born black in Britain. Despite this, many insist that any attempt to level the playing ground is special treatment, and that we must focus on equality of opportunity, without realising that levelling the playing ground is enabling equality of opportunity.

The way it was spoken about, you’d think that the FA’s plans weren’t suggesting having

one person of colour on an interview shortlist, but instead were asking team heads to walk into their local supermarket and offer their most high-level jobs to the first random black person they saw in the vegetable aisle.

We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance.

Representation doesn’t always mean that the representer will work in the favour of those who need representation.

Not seeing race does little to deconstruct racist structures or materially improve the conditions which people of colour are subject to

daily. In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon – earned or not – because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.

Racism does not go both ways. There are unique forms of discrimination that are backed up by entitlement, assertion and, most importantly, supported by a structural power strong enough to scare you into complying with the demands of the status quo. We have to recognise this.

Racism’s legacy does not exist without purpose. It brings with it

not just a disempowerment for those affected by it, but an empowerment for those who are not. That is white privilege.

For people who oppose anti-racism on the grounds of freedom of speech, opposition to gross racial disparities is about ‘offence’, rather than the heavily unequal material conditions that people affected by it carry as burden. Being in a position where their lives are so comfortable that they don’t really have anything material to oppose, faux ‘free speech’ defenders spend all their spare time railing against ‘offence culture’. When they make it about offence rather than their own complicity in a drastically unjust system, they successfully transfer the responsibility of fixing the system from the benefactors of it to those who are likely

to lose out because of it. Tackling racism moves from conversations about justice to conversations about sensitivity.

Fear of black characters is fear of a black planet.

We are told that black actors and actresses cast as central characters in works of fiction are unrealistic. We are told that they are historically inaccurate, or that they are too far a stretch of the imagination. But really, this is about a belligerent section of society that refuses to think outside of themselves, who believe that everything must cater to them and the

rest of us must adapt to their whims and wishes. And this is nothing but insulting when heard by the black fiction lover who, if they are to enjoy their chosen genre, have no choice but to empathise with a character who looks nothing like them.

If the last five years have taught us anything, it’s that feminism is a broad church that has less to do with the upkeep of your appearance, and more to do with the upkeep of your politics.