Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race summary

Far-right rhetoric isn’t a subtle tool. When white racists are confronted with Black and brown people, their yelled refrain is often “Go back to where you came from!”

But, as the Institute of Race Relations’ director, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, told an audience in 2008, “We are here because you were there.”

As it often happens when it comes to the translatlantic slave trade, British people tend to associate the civil rights movement with the United States. It’s important to note that Britain, however, also has its own history of Black civil rights movements.

Let’s look back a bit. Historically speaking, Britain made it extremely difficult for people of color to assimilate, even when legislation encouraged them to immigrate there.

When you’re not aware of how racism works, it’s easy to associate it only with institutions such as the police force. But in truth, racism can be experienced in many ways. It might be the look someone gives you or some implicit bias you experience.

This is known as structural racism, and it operates much more broadly within a society than a nation’s institutions.

If you’re white, you’ve most likely never really thought about how your status as a white person might have helped you.

Systemic racism negatively affects people of color, but it also works in the opposite direction. White people benefit from white privilege.

As a four-year-old, the author asked her mother when she would become white. Her logic was that on TV she’d only ever seen good people portrayed as white, while bad people were inevitably Black.

The lack of positive Black representation is symptomatic of a deeper dread: the fear of a Black planet. In other words, some white people quake at the idea that Black people will one day become the majority in any historically white country.

When Lena Dunham’s TV show Girls first aired in 2012, it was initially met with critical acclaim. It was lauded as the most feminist show to air in decades and an accurate, contemporary portrayal of young women’s lives. But a backlash eventually followed – and quite rightly, as the cast were almost exclusively white, despite being set in the diverse melting pot of New York City.

It’s indicative of a wider trend. Actually, most leaders of popular feminism today are white women.

If you live in Britain, you’ve probably heard the term “white working class” bandied about as a way to describe the country’s disadvantaged.

In fact, British politicians have a certain fondness for the term. It would seem to suggest there are people at the bottom of society who have been denied opportunities and rights because of their class, and that’s all there is to it.