Reni Eddo-Lodge: Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

my name is renie edol Lodge um I'm a journalist and I am the author of the new book why I'm no longer talking to white people about race about three and a half years ago now um I wrote a post on my blog called why I'm no longer talking to white people about race I wrote it at a point of extreme frustration and despair frankly uh after a few years of attempting to try and talk to white people about race and just really getting nowhere I was frankly bashing my head against a brick wall I wasn't getting anywhere um and I was emotionally exhausted um I'd found myself in feminist circles and Progressive circles around people who profess to be really Forward Thinking really right on that's a bit of an Antiquated phrase isn't it right on but anyway and um but when I tried to talk to them about race and racism it was just like a threshold that was absolutely I was not allowed to talk about it um I found myself being called the real racist you know I was told that I was silencing white people um I I became the problem so I wrote the blog post and I said that I can't have a conversation with people about the nuances of a problem if they don't even recognize that the problem exists so I just pressed published left it at that uh and then when I returned to my website I could see it had really taken on a life of its own it was being shared more times than I car to count and it was really strongly resonating with people um in a way that I couldn't even begin to predict um and the response was also overwhelmingly positive um people saying you know what renie what you've done is articulated exactly how I feel I've been trying to have this conversation for a decade I've been trying to have this conversation for 30 years etc etc and then there were also people who were saying you've completely changed my perspective on this issue thank you so much I carried on being a jobbing journalist uh and then I found myself in the position where I was able to write a book and when I had that opportunity I knew I could write nothing but this book it had to be a um an exploration of race and racism in our society and how British Society is shaped by race because I think that's something that we are in deep denial about we often look over to the states and we're like oh well you know all the problems are over there we never discuss our own issues to do with race and racism here I know that when I was growing up and going to schools in and around London um I when it came to Black History Month I learned about the US struggle um to the extent that I didn't even know about events civil rights struggles that are happening in and around London and and across Britain you know huge Monumental things you know you have to ask who has access to right history in the first place uh something that I write a lot in the book is essentially that um there's problems even in the supply chain to find to get people who are not white into positions of influence in the first place to write the book to commission the TV series about black British history um or Asian British history racism is not coincidental it exists for a social purpose to basically to compound power in the the hands of people who are white you know that's the point of racism it has a social point and and actually that's uh it's very effective as if you look at our bastions of power in this country um there's barely anybody who isn't white in those Arenas so when I talk about um White Privilege um I'm not saying white people have lived lives of luxury and wealth that's certainly not what I'm saying at all you know I basically grew up in poverty alongside many other white people in poverty um but what I am talking about is the fact that if your name sounds British rather than African or Asian you're more likely to get the job interview it's as simple as that you know um so it's more about structural advantage and the cost of that is structural disadvantage the 1999 mfon report uh the inquiry into you know the catastrophic failures um of the police in investigating uh Steven Lawrence's death uh came up with the term institutional racism and that was about the collective effect of bias and how that essentially uh marginalizes people who aren't white you know and it could be racial stereotyping uh and and sometimes just ignorance and what the collective effects of bias do is um create a situation where let's say in fact let's not let's say you know the facts show us that um you know black a black boy is more likely to be excluded from school than the rest of the school population more likely to be to be marked down by his own teachers at SATs level so that's year six um less likely to get into one of the most prestigious universities in Britain if they if he does graduate from one of those universities he's much more likely to get one of the lower grades and higher grades if he manages to get a decent grade and um start sending out CVS he's much more likely to um wait a longer time for interview because research has basically shown that people with African and Asian sounding names will will wait much longer to be interviewed and if he does get the education and the job then there's a racial pay Gap so we can see at frequent stages um in his life when he interacts with national institutions you know healthc care you know employment education housing etc etc um he's disadvantaged uh that's not me saying he's a victim or you know he should just give up um and that's not me saying white people are evil but that is me saying that there's a he's at a structural disadvantage and that the odds are stacked against him it's not easy to spot um you know straight off the bat it's not somebody spitting you in the street it's not somebody calling you the nword uh for somebody who isn't white and isn't in that institution sometimes it's just a quiet understanding of difference of you know knowing that you being treated different differently here in the case of like a racial pay Gap nobody ever talks about their pay packets people are notoriously secretive about that so you may never know um and that creates a situation where if you try to bring it up with your colleagues sometimes your white colleagues you'll be told you just imagine you're just imagining it this doesn't exist you've got a chip on your shoulder and so that's really what I mean by structural racism I'm talking about the big picture here so I think that the way in which we have understood ourselves to be Progressive and forward- facing until very recently is just to ignore race just to say well we don't see race you know I treat everybody equally etc etc uh I've lost counted the amount of times in which somebody will be like oh the black guy you know because they they're scared about saying the word black in case it offends nobody cares about the word black in terms of offense what I'm offended by is drastic racial inequalities because I think that it's unacceptable in 2017 that um this is still the state of play you know I don't care if you call me black I'm black it's a descriptor you know I'm five' five I'm not going to start crying if you say that I'm five fo five you know it's a descriptor it's an adjective um and so and so color of blindness is that denial it it is that skirt around the issue don't raise it and and and what it does is essentially create a situation where if you do start naming the problem which is race and racism um then you become the problem um I've received push back from people with the with the book the title alone oh you can't generalize white people in this way but I think that's because white people are not used to being called white as a descript it as a plain adjective nothing more nothing less because whiteness is considered invisible in our society and if you are considered to have a race you're not white there's a chapter in the book called fear fear of a Black Planet um I wrote it at the beginning of 2016 and then I think that in terms of global politics it really became pertinent um and Fear of a Black Planet is essentially um people who on one side deny the power relations of race in this country but on the other side are very very scared of white people becoming a minority almost as if they recognize that being a minority in this country means treatment that is not preferential so it's almost like a bit of a double bind schrodingers cat situation they've got themselves into there um I actually interview a farri right politician Nick Griffin in the book and uh when I asked him but why do you think that you know white people becoming a minority in Britain would be a bad thing he said I regard that to be a racist question which I think suggests to me that there is an understanding there from people who might dedicate their lives careers to white supremacy frankly um there is an understanding that um being a racial minority means means structural disadvantage there is an understanding no matter how much they might suggest to you that that isn't the case at all and so I think that farri politics and its sort of resurgence across the globe is almost that almost as the last dying Cry of uh of monocultural society uh but the fact of the matter is we are moving towards a more um Global Society you know and and I think that that's no bad thing and I think that it isn't a bad thing that um people from different cultures and different races are meeting each other and you know falling in love with each other and having children with each other I think that's an interesting thing we're all learning from each other in that respect but the rise of far right politics at least across you know Western Europe and in the US uh sees this as a tragedy they think that they're losing something but but the people from those political parties fail to recognize that they are the dominant majority in their countries and that probably isn't going to change anytime soon so the book is for anybody who's interested in these issues regardless of your race I think that it's really important that if you care about these issues and you care about ending racism in our society then you familiarize yourself with the ways in which race has shaped our society um and to anybody who uh is apprehensive about reading the book because they're white I would say get over yourself I mean you know I wrote the book for people to read and if I didn't want people to read it I would have written a little pamphlet and burnt it in my back Garden or something even though the opening essay is me talking about my utter frustration you know in dealing with brick walls of denial I know many a white person who not only is curious to know more but also so so Keen for Change and and I think that every all of us have it have it when within ourselves to Advocate advocate for change I I really do believe that

Channel: Foyles

Views: 355,534

Keywords: Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, race, racism, black British history, black, British politics, equality, inequality, structural racism, white privilege, blog, diversity, institutional racism, journalist, civil rights, feminism, intersectional, class, book, bookshop, Bloomsbury, Foyles, far right, immigration, POC, women of colour, writers of colour

Id: 2vJZdeSqfFY

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2017