Bloomsbury Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race

I bought this book because I was intrigued by the title. I hadn’t heard of the author and, logically speaking, a book with such a title could have been written by someone of any ethnicity. Yet I just knew, even before the book dropped through my letterbox, that the writer would be black.So why has Ms. Eddo-Lodge stopped ‘talking to white people about race’? Essentially because she doesn’t like the way white people respond – even her friends. She can’t understand why ‘their eyes glaze over in boredom or widen in indignation’, why they just don’t ‘get it’. She tells us:‘I can’t continue to emotionally exhaust myself trying to get my message across, while also toeing a very precarious line that tries not to implicate any one white person in their role in perpetuating structural racism, lest they character assassinate me.’Poor thing. Heaven forbid that someone might take exception to being told that because they are white they are racist, or that they might ‘character assassinate’ her by having the gall to question her characterization of them.It comes as no surprise to discover what she thinks is the source of the ‘structural racism’ that supposedly plagues Britain today – in a word, slavery. She concedes that prior to studying black history in her second year at university her knowledge of history was lacking. It shows. Her take on things is basic and highly selective. There is no mention of slavery being commonplace in Africa long before any European involvement and only a hint of the key part African blacks played in the slave trade. There is only grudging acknowledgement of the important role that Britain played (and continues to play) in abolishing slavery. But what is most lacking is any sense of historical context. It is as though she thinks that the average white person’s ancestors lived in the lap of luxury on the ‘white wealth amassed from the profits of slavery’, when if she knew anything about history she would know that even in the latter part of the period in question, those ancestors – including those of her white friends – were more likely to have lived in abject poverty, one step away from the workhouse, their children routinely sent down mines or up chimneys. Against this background her comments about ‘profits from slavery seeping into the fabric of British society’ are profoundly disingenuous – merely a way of unjustifiably allotting blame hundreds of years after the fact on the basis of nothing other than skin colour. The simple fact is that Eddo-Lodge’s white friends should no more feel ‘embarrassed’ by slavery than she should be embarrassed by the involvement of her own antecedents in cannibalism, human sacrifice, or indeed slavery.The supposed ‘historical’ analysis jumps from slavery to a string of examples of racism in 20th century Britain, with no connection other than the ongoing assumption that white people are racist. In the ensuing chapters there are the usual tropes about institutional racism, white privilege, a digression into feminism - another of the author’s gripes – and social class. But there is nothing new or original – not one thing - just a succession of selective anecdotes and personal hang-ups. There is certainly no serious sociological or political analysis, and as polemic we’ve heard it all before.In trotting out the usual well-worn grievances Eddo-Lodge simply repeats the same logical mistakes. Her text is littered with examples of erroneous thinking. For example, according to her reasoning, because a) most privileged people are white it follows that b) most white people are privileged. This is equivalent to saying that because a) most kings are human beings, then b) most human beings are kings. Eddo-Lodge is fond of casting aspersions about white people not ‘getting’ her point yet this is evidently something she doesn’t ‘get’. Yes, it is true that in the UK those who are rich and powerful, or who own land or property, or who have the best jobs or the highest salaries, etc., tend to be white. Statistically, this is only to be expected given that the majority of the population is white. And there are clear historical, political and sociological explanations for how these people came to have the advantages they do, explanations which by and large have nothing to do with race. This advantaged group is, by definition, a minority – it is not logically possible for most people to have the best jobs, the highest salaries, etc. Is it unfair that this minority has these privileges? Certainly, in some respects yes. However – and this is the point that Eddo-Lodge obviously doesn’t get – to the extent that this state of affairs is unfair, it is just as unfair to the average white person as it is to the average black person.No doubt the reason Eddo-Lodge’s white friends ‘eyes glaze over in boredom’ whenever she talks about race is precisely because they have heard it all before. But if Ms. Eddo-Lodge wants to know why her friends’ eyes might, as she says, ‘widen in indignation’ I can enlighten her.Like everyone else, Eddo-Lodge’s white friends will be aware of the extraordinary lengths the UK has gone to over the past half-century or more to encourage and accommodate black inclusion. The UK has changed its laws, introduced no end of initiatives and directed considerable public funds to that end. Her friends will also know that the UK has a long history of welcoming immigrants from around the world. In short, there are few if any countries that could be said to be less racist than the UK.One of the more visible efforts to increase black inclusion is to be found in the media. Black faces are now everywhere on TV; on the main terrestrial TV channels it would be difficult to find a programme that doesn’t have an overrepresentation of black presenters, reporters, actors, etc., one that is out of all proportion to the relative size of the black community. Anyone who doubts this should try counting the number of TV adverts that don’t have black actors. In its current drive to include black actors in any and every drama the BBC stretches dramatic credibility to the point where it risks ridicule. And note that it is specifically black inclusion that is being accommodated here. Indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking that Black/Black British was the largest minority group in the UK, yet it is less than half the size of the Asian/Asian British population which enjoys nowhere near the same levels of representation in the media.Of course none of this is acknowledged in Eddo-Lodge’s conveniently skewed reading of things or in her purposefully selective approach to the facts. And there is something else that her friends will be all too aware of, something that, again, is conspicuously absent from Eddo-Lodge’s account. Her white friends will know that whenever the media carries reports of the perpetrators of crime there is a good chance that the faces looking back at them will be black. The fact is that the black community places a disproportionately high burden on the criminal justice system with far higher levels of knife crime, drug dealing and robbery than other sections of the UK population. Black families are more likely to be single parent families, and the black community draws disproportionately on social services, on health, education and the benefits system. Of course none of this is about skin colour – being black doesn’t cause someone to commit crime or abandon their own children - but it is about attitude, perspective and values.And here we come to the nub of the issue and the essential problem with this book. For however much many in the black community strive to be part of British society, and through their talents and hard work make a valuable and important contribution to society, there remains a sizable and unduly vocal minority who are intent on portraying themselves as victims, as continually hard done by. They find fault and take exception to anything and everything, automatically characterizing any and every situation or circumstance as a consequence of being black – an attitude so prevalent that it is now frequently caricatured by comedians with the expression: ‘It’s coz I is black innit’. It is precisely this undercurrent of self-pitying, sniping resentment that informs this book, a book that is unashamedly prejudiced and intolerant. I was safe in assuming that its author would be black – not, for example, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Chinese – because even the very title betrays this selfsame characteristic attitude of ungracious, caustic negativity. We do indeed have a problem with racism in the UK and this ill-informed and unfortunate book serves to illustrate the problem – but not in the way the author thinks.

As an SE Asian I would like to understand more about black and their history but I feel like this book is very biased and poorly written. I can't even force to finish it.

Very biased in favor of the authors blinkered opinions. Have your cake and eat it came to mind. Not greatly written or adding much to sensible debate.

I’m reviewing this book as a person who has been actively fighting bigotry for over forty years and I have put myself on the line many times to do so.When I started reading, I had been soul-searching about this issue for several weeks and I was more than willing to question whether the approach I have always taken was still appropriate. I felt it was the responsible thing to do, but rather than changing any of my opinions, this book did nothing but confirm them. It’s a shoddy and immature reworking of Marxist theory which uses race as a substitute for class. It is the worst kind of sloppy journalism- a selective view of history and a skewed use of statistics and personal reporting. If you can’t make your point without resorting to this kind of propaganda, you’re not making your point at all. Some of the assertions are so absurd they drift into the comical.One gets the impression that the author wishes to impart a sense that when the stain of slavery was active in Britain, most of the population were sitting dressed in fine silk in country houses, taking tea with the vicar and living off the profits. In fact, for the vast majority of people, living conditions were utterly atrocious and they enjoyed virtually nothing in the way of human rights. Worth remembering, too, that the people living in the cotton towns and cities of North-West England literally starved to end slavery, when they supported Lincoln’s embargo of Confederate States where the cotton they spun came from. I imagine that mentioning their sacrifice would be rather inconvenient to the polemic. As would all the wonderful achievements of so many black people. Inconvenient too, the fact that there were numerous African slave traders and that the indigenous people of Britain had been both enslaved en masse and taken as slaves themselves over a period of many hundreds of years. I should also mention the frankly ludicrous act of judging the human consciousness of the past with the one we enjoy in the present. History is complicated and trying to unravel it is no easy task.Clearly, the author believes if someone doesn’t like her assertions, it’s because they are racist. What a wonderful get out clause. The author is so certain of her intellectual and moral superiority, she couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything. In this, she has something in common with those wretched souls who casually set about vicious social media shaming and who actively try to destroy the lives of people who make a single mistake or disagree with them, thus ensuring no-one hears that there is much more to this story than the author would have us believe. We have a word for that- and the word is fascism.I believe those who follow the path of separatism will not create the utopia they envision, indeed, they will create its opposite. Don’t take my word for it, there is testament enough to that in the history of the world.

This book really changed how I saw the world. I thought I was fairly well informed about racism but this opened my eyes to how pervasive it is. It's also helped me have better conversations about racism with people who have different views to me on it, in that they don't think it's a big issue. I could hardly put it down and read it within a couple of days. Compelling, difficult but motivated me to speak out and do more, where I can.