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

by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Then bell hooks stepped forward in 1981, writing in Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism: ‘The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that . . . women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labelling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization. It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to reappropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.’