Title: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Author: Reni Eddo-Lodge
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Country: United Kingdom
The book title "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" is just as provocative as its cover design. To white people appears almost hidden on the cover, creating a visual representation of white people's blindness to structural racism.
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is also the title of a blog post Eddo-Lodge wrote back in February of 2014. Her post was an act of self-preservation, self-care and an act of personal warfare.
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 saying that she'd had enough.
This book is an extension of Eddo-Lodge’s viral post, where she openly expresses her frustrations when talking to white people who fail to acknowledge their privilege, or those who display a disconnect when she shares a subjective experience as a black woman in Britain or those who become defensive, often prepare counter-arguments and are quick to pinpoint flaws in her experience when she speaks about race.
Let’s be clear, in this book Eddo-Lodge isn't trying to guilt trip white people, rather, all she’s is saying is that she is at the end of her tether.
In this collection of seven essays, Eddo-Lodge delves into topics like structural racism, class and feminism. The opening essay takes the reader on a crash course in black British history, where she explores the UK’s brutal and extensive involvement in the slave trade.
This is a must read for anybody who can read. It’s the boldness and straight talk which makes this book memorable as it leaves a heart-wrenching trail of case histories, statistical and anecdotal evidence, personal stories and opinion about the manifestation of overt and covert racism, addressing racism as a systematic problem and calling out those who run the system to do something about it. This book instigates a candid and much needed dialogue across a spectrum of races.
Words: Maggie Ibiam