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

by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Discussing racism is not the same thing as discussing ‘black identity’. Discussing racism is about discussing white identity. It’s about white anxiety. It’s about asking why whiteness has this reflexive need to define itself against immigrant bogey monsters in order to feel comfortable, safe and secure. Why am I saying one thing, and white people are hearing something completely different?

White people, you need to talk to other white people about race. Yes, you may be written off as a radical, but you have much less to lose.

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.

After I declared that I no longer wanted to talk to white people about race in 2014, I noticed a sudden upswing in people, white and otherwise, who wanted to hear me talk about race. Everyone wanted to know what I had to say once I had said what I’d always been discouraged from saying. Setting my boundaries had given me a renewed permission to speak.

I know that, at first, talking about race is uncomfortable, because too many white people are angry and in denial. And I understand that after white people begin to get it, it’s even more uncomfortable for them to think about how their whiteness has silently aided them in life. A lifetime learning to empathise with white people’s stories means that I get it. But I don’t want white guilt. Neither do I want to see white people wasting precious time profusely apologising rather than actively doing things. No useful movements for change have ever sprung out of fervent guilt. Instead, get angry. Anger is useful. Use it for good. Support those in the struggle, rather than spending too much time pitying yourself.

Often in these conversations, someone will pipe up to say in order to win, we need unity. But I think that if we wait for unity, we’ll be waiting for ever.

Most importantly, we must survive in this mess, and we do that any way we can.

If you are disgusted by what you see, and if you feel the fire coursing through your veins, then it’s up to you. You don’t have to be the leader of a global movement or a household name. It can be as small scale as chipping away at the warped power relations in your workplace. It can be passing on knowledge and skills to those who wouldn’t access them otherwise. It can be creative. It can be informal. It can be your job. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you’re doing something.

‘It’s very controversial, isn’t it?’ they’ll ask, over and over again, in the space of a thirty minute conversation. ‘Is it?’ I’ll respond. ‘Have you read it?’ ‘No’, they will inevitably say.