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A review by daumari
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
5.0
I am not the target audience for this book, but I still strongly encourage everyone to read it as Eddo-Lodge addresses essential factors underpinning the structure of our society.
This year (2018 at time of writing) is exhausting and feels like it's gone on forever. I recognize part of that fatigue has been due to doing ally-adjacent work of explaining in conversations why coded language and power structures are harmful (it's unfair to put the burden of educating the unaware on people of color, but as I am a non-black POC, I feel I can be useful here). A friend was accused of "reverse racism", and their acquaintance had to gently but firmly be informed that racism is prejudice + power, so it doesn't check out to accuse their one black acquaintance of it. Eddo-Lodge goes into detail with history and statistics on why this is so.
The chapter on intersectionality with feminism also struck a chord with me, as I have [white] female friends who mentioned early in the current administration that they just didn't check the news any more as it was stressful/frustrating/etc. I absolutely understand the need for relief from the firehose onslaught of, well, everything but at the same time, there are fellow citizens who cannot afford to tune out as policy changes immediately affect them.
I was caught off guard by this book being centered on British structural racism, but realized that as an American, most of my prior reading is centered on a domestic lens. There's a cool comfort in recognizing other countries have similar issues (though we arguably inherited it from the mother country before ah, making it our own). Not sure if other US readers are aware, but typically when Brits refer to Asians, they mean South Asians instead of East. The Asian diaspora includes everyone descended from Asian countries, but it's an interesting geographical linguistic distinction (and a good reminder that I and fellow east Asian Americans need to show solidarity with our brown brothers and sisters).
Societal struggle is not a zero sum game. The "take back our country" rhetoric is frustrating because the success of black and brown people does not diminish white people in the same field. It's not the job of minority folks to educate our white friends, but this book is a good start.
This year (2018 at time of writing) is exhausting and feels like it's gone on forever. I recognize part of that fatigue has been due to doing ally-adjacent work of explaining in conversations why coded language and power structures are harmful (it's unfair to put the burden of educating the unaware on people of color, but as I am a non-black POC, I feel I can be useful here). A friend was accused of "reverse racism", and their acquaintance had to gently but firmly be informed that racism is prejudice + power, so it doesn't check out to accuse their one black acquaintance of it. Eddo-Lodge goes into detail with history and statistics on why this is so.
The chapter on intersectionality with feminism also struck a chord with me, as I have [white] female friends who mentioned early in the current administration that they just didn't check the news any more as it was stressful/frustrating/etc. I absolutely understand the need for relief from the firehose onslaught of, well, everything but at the same time, there are fellow citizens who cannot afford to tune out as policy changes immediately affect them.
I was caught off guard by this book being centered on British structural racism, but realized that as an American, most of my prior reading is centered on a domestic lens. There's a cool comfort in recognizing other countries have similar issues (though we arguably inherited it from the mother country before ah, making it our own). Not sure if other US readers are aware, but typically when Brits refer to Asians, they mean South Asians instead of East. The Asian diaspora includes everyone descended from Asian countries, but it's an interesting geographical linguistic distinction (and a good reminder that I and fellow east Asian Americans need to show solidarity with our brown brothers and sisters).
Societal struggle is not a zero sum game. The "take back our country" rhetoric is frustrating because the success of black and brown people does not diminish white people in the same field. It's not the job of minority folks to educate our white friends, but this book is a good start.