Review Why Im No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Hardcover, 272 pages |
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The provocative title is hard to ignore, and so is the volume's cover. Seen from afar, it appears to be called Why I'g No Longer Talking About Race, which is intriguing enough on its own. You lot accept to look closer to see To White People hiding underneath it in debossed letters. It'southward a striking visual representation of white people's blindness to everyday, structural racism — one of the central ideas that British journalist and feminist Reni Eddo-Club presents in her debut collection of essays.
"Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" is also the title of a web log postal service she wrote back in February of 2014. In that post, Eddo-Lodge wasn't trying to remove white people from the conversation or take them on a guilt trip; rather, she was simply proverb that she'd had enough. It was an act of cocky-preservation. She was washed with talking to white people who'd never had to retrieve about what it meant to be white, or who showed a deep emotional disconnect when she told them most her experience as a black woman, or who — instead of listening while she spoke — were almost instinctively preparing trite counter-arguments in their heads, waiting for her to stop only to tell her that she was wrong — situations that will sound only too familiar to many people of color.
The post quickly went viral and, ironically, always since she pressed publish she hasn't been able to cease talking almost race. Readers flock to see her speak at events around the U.K; just few a days ago, organizers of an effect at London's Tate Modern museum had to turn hundreds of people abroad from one of her events. She took to Facebook and Twitter to address the state of affairs, apologizing to those who couldn't get in — and pointing out her frustration at existence underestimated. The whole incident, she wrote, spoke to "many of the issues I've written about in my volume."
In this collection of seven essays, Eddo-Lodge delves into topics like structural racism, grade and feminism. But she begins with a crash course in black British history. Despite growing up in London, in school she studied blackness history through the lens of the American civil rights move. It wasn't until she went to university that she learned more most her country's brutal and all-encompassing participation in the slave trade — which inspired her to learn more about what it was like to be black in post-slavery Britain. She writes near this history with the clarity and approachability of a curious learner sharing what she'due south discovered, giving necessary context for everything she'due south going to discuss in the balance of the book. And although Why I'g No Longer Talking centers on events in Britain, information technology'south still accessible to readers of black American history.
That'south the case throughout the book, as Eddo-Club touches on themes that are sure to resonate with people of color everywhere. This is peculiarly evident in her exploration of white privilege, which she defines as "an absence of the consequences of racism" — an eloquent explanation paired with real-world examples of what happens when white privilege seeps into the conversation most race, whether it's an informal conversation with a new acquaintance or a wider national discussion effectually a racially motivated murder.
The impact of that blog post back in 2014 was a clear sign that people — both white and blackness — were hungry for more than meaningful discussions almost race. This collection of essays is Eddo-Society's contribution to keeping the chat going. Simply she takes it a step further and makes a call to action. That call is muted at the beginning: "I hope you use it every bit a tool," she writes in the preface, merely by the end, Eddo-Order is unapologetic in calling racism a white trouble: "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."
Information technology'due south that boldness, that direct talk which makes this book memorable. Eddo-Lodge pushes readers to recognize that racism is a systemic problem that needs to be tackled by those who run the system.
Silvia Viñas is a journalist and editor for NPR'south Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante.
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Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/11/14/563728725/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race-is-a-call-to-action
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