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

by Reni Eddo-Lodge

  Although Baroness Warsi somewhat optimistically sought to change the terms of the debate, the resentment has never stopped being targeted at immigrants. This feeling of scarcity has been fuelled by government policy. Policies like right to buy, which gave council- house tenants the option to buy the property they were living in with a big discount in the 1980s, reduced the amount of Britain’s social-housing stock. Even now, councils are struggling to replace property sold. Information tracking sales between 2015 and 2016 showed that for the 12,246 council homes sold to tenants in England under right to buy, just 2,055 replacements began to be built.9 This is a consequence of government direction, not grasping immigrants hoarding housing.

  The answer to ending British people living in poverty and precarious housing will not be found in ending immigration. There isn’t any evidence to suggest that if ‘my kind’ all ‘go back to where we came from’ life would get any better or easier for poor white people. The same systems and practices that lead to class hierarchy would still stand.

  We must ask why politicians only ever approach class and poverty issues when it is in relation to whiteness. When race isn’t mentioned, working-class people aren’t considered deserving of targeted policies at all. In fact, before all of this white working-class talk, class was a political taboo. When Margaret Thatcher said in 1987 that there was no such thing as society, she solidified a national feeling that it was individual ambition alone that would allow a person to get on in life. Although we as a country are all obsessed with class, we had deluded ourselves for a long time that it didn’t matter at all.

  But now, I worry that we’ve too eagerly accepted the far right’s agenda of decent hard-working white British people being besieged by immigrants. A 2014 report from market research company Ipsos MORI found that British people thought the foreign-born population of the country was 31 per cent, as opposed to the actual number of 13 per cent.10 The same report found that the higher your income, the more likely you are to think that immigrants are a drain on public services. Things have switched from berating working-class people for daring to exist, to extending a hand of help to them as long as it’s in opposition to those grasping ethnic minorities. Sticking ‘white’ in front of the phrase working class is used to make assumptions about race, work and poverty that compounds the currency-like power of whiteness.

  When it comes to talking about race, diversity, or even the faintest liberally minded hint of inclusion, self-interested white middle-class people seem to find a renewed interest in the advancement of their white working-class counterparts. In the hands of the have-it-alls, the class and race of the have-nots are pitted against each other. This myth of grabby immigrants angling themselves to snatch opportunities from white working-class people couldn’t be further from the truth. A report from The Economist, combing through data from the Office of National Statistics, found that some of the richest in Britain benefit from services like public transport and the NHS at a significant advantage than their poorer counterparts,11 proving that those with wealth already do a very good job of hogging resources. The myth of grabby immigrants does, however, work to serve a particular agenda. These are the interests of those who are invested in preserving the current order of things.

  This is a classic (and very successful) case of divide and rule. It feels like a cliché to say, but if anyone feeling resentful about their immigrant neighbours took the time to talk to them and find out a bit about their lives, they would almost certainly find that these people do not have everything handed to them on a plate, but instead are living in poor, cramped conditions, likely having left even worse conditions from wherever they’ve moved from.

  Years before this country had a significant black and immigrant presence, there was an entrenched class hierarchy. The people who maintain these class divisions didn’t care about those on the bottom rung then, and they don’t care now. But immigration blamers encourage you to point to your neighbour and convince yourself that they are the problem, rather than question where wealth is concentrated in this country, and exactly why resources are so scarce. And the people who push this rhetoric couldn’t care less either way, just as long as you’re not pointing the finger at them. It isn’t right to suggest that every win for race equality results in a loss for white working-class people. When socially mobile black people manage to penetrate white-dominated spheres, they often try to put provisions in place (like diversity schemes) to bring others up with them. And they’re just more visible than white people. I see class-based outcry about efforts to boost black representation from people who are in the position to bring up their working-class counterparts if they wanted to. For some reason, they choose not to, yet are quick to block other kinds of progress.

  So although class and race are inextricably connected, for people of colour, moving or changing class can be a tantalising prospect. Children of immigrants are often assured by well-meaning parents that educational access to the middle classes can absolve them from racism. We are told to work hard, go to a good university, and get a good job.

  We can’t berate our parents for wanting us to have a better life and better chances than they did. But after I graduated, I quickly realised that social mobility was not going to save me. My suspicions were backed up by the statistics. When the Trades Union Congress looked at data from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey, they found that black employees were dealing with a growing pay gap in comparison to their white counterparts, and that this pay gap actually widened with higher qualifications. Black people with education up to GSCE level were paid 11 per cent less. Black people with A-levels saw an average of 14 per cent less pay, and university-educated black graduates saw a gap of, on average, 23 per cent less pay than their white peers.12 A cap, gown and degree scroll does nothing to shield black graduates from discrimination.

  The children of immigrants have quietly assimilated to demands of colour-blindness, doing away with any evidence of our culture and heritage in an effort to fit in. We’ve listened to our socially conservative parents, and educated ourselves up to our eyeballs. We’ve kept our gripes to ourselves, and changed our appearance, names, accents and dress in order to fit the status quo. We have bitten our tongues, exercised safe judgement, and tiptoed around white feelings in an effort to not rock the boat. We’ve been tolerant up to the point of not even mentioning race, lest we’re accused of playing the race card. Forget politician-speak about Britain being a tolerant country. Being constantly looked at like an alien in the country you were born in requires true tolerance.

  I don’t think that any amount of class privilege, money or education can shield you from racism. And although I don’t begrudge kids from poor backgrounds getting the education or training they desire and following their dreams (in fact, I actively encourage it), I want them to know that this alone is not going to end racism, because the onus isn’t on them to change people’s minds with sharp suits, slick hair and FTSE100 companies.

  Moving class requires a modicum of success, and if you’re not white, success is a double-edged sword. Even if you work really hard and find yourself at the top of your game, there will be a debate about whether this has happened because of your race, or despite it. When a woman who wasn’t white – poet Sarah Howe – won the £20,000 TS Eliot Prize for poetry, satirical magazine Private Eye questioned her success, writing: ‘as a successful and very “presentable” young woman with a dual Anglo–Chinese heritage, Howe can be seen as a more acceptable ambassador for poetry than the distinguished grumpy old men she saw off.’13 The suggestion couldn’t be clearer: it was an implication that her success was no more than a box-ticking exercise. There is a suspicion laid at the feet of people who aren’t white who succeed outside of their designated fields (for black people, those fields are singing and sport). And if you are a young woman, some will think that you have only become successful because an imagined male superior is interested in having sex with you. The reason why you have made it is never assumed to be a
result of your hard work, will or determination. There’s nothing more threatening to some than the redistribution of cultural capital.

  Complicating the idea that race and class are distinctly separate rather than intertwined will be hard work. It involves piercing a million thought bubbles currently dominating conversations about class in this country. It means irritating politicians and commentators, and it means calling their story of a white working class besieged by selfish and ungrateful immigrants exactly what they are – hate-mongering nonsense. Divide and rule serves no useful purpose in the politics of class solidarity, neither does it work particularly well in lifting people out of poverty. We know that targeted policies aimed at eradicating class inequalities will also go some way in challenging race inequalities, because so many black households are low income. But we can’t be naive enough to believe that those in power are in any way interested in piercing their power for the sake of a fairer society. And although working-class white and BME people have lots in common, we need to remember that although the experiences are very similar, they are also very different.

  Although some deal with class prejudice, others deal with racialised class prejudice. It’s that complexity that needs to be navigated successfully if we ever want an accurate understanding of what it means to be working class in Britain today.

  7

  THERE’S NO JUSTICE, THERE’S JUST US

  ‘When do you think we’ll get to an end point?’

  I’m at a sixth-form college in south London, talking to a large group of teenagers about racism in Britain. The question is put to me by a seventeen-year-old girl. She’s echoed on this point by her teacher. They’re both white.

  ‘There is no end point in sight,’ I reply. ‘You can’t skip to the resolution without having the difficult, messy conversation first. We’re still in the hard bit.’

  After my talk, a group of black teenagers crowd around me outside, talking excitedly. ‘I think the people who want to skip to an end point are the ones not really affected by the issues,’ says one girl. I’m impressed by her insight.

  When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, everyone was quick to crow that we were now living in a post-racial society. But proclaiming post-racial success was a way to bury any discussion of racism – to insist that we had actually pressed fast forward, and everything was ok now. That there was no need to complain. ‘End point’ is the new ‘post racial’. The narrative has changed ever so slightly. ‘Post racial’ only acknowledged racism of the past, and insisted that the present was an anti-racist utopia. ‘End point’ accepts the racism of the present, but doesn’t want to dwell on it too much, instead hoping that the post-racist utopia is just around the corner. Both are very reluctant to talk about racism.

  I didn’t want to disappoint that class of sixth-formers, but there was no happy ending to my speech. Britain’s relationship with race and racism isn’t a neat narrative with a feel-good resolution. Change is incremental, and racism will exist long after I die. But if you’re committed to anti-racism, you’re in it for the long haul. It will be difficult. Getting to the end point will require you to be uncomfortable.

  In my original blog post of 2014, I spoke about a communication gap that was so frustrating that it pushed me away from talking to white people about race. I still think there is a communication gap, and I’m not sure if we will ever overcome it. Even now, when I talk about racism, the response from white people is to shift the focus away from their complicity and on to a conversation about what it means to be black, and about ‘black identity’. They might hand-wring about what they call ‘identity politics’ – a term now used by the powerful to describe the resistance of the structurally disadvantaged. But they won’t properly engage in the conversation, instead complaining that people mustn’t divide themselves off into small groups, and that we’re all one race, ‘the human race’. Discussing racism is not the same thing as discussing ‘black identity’. Discussing racism is about discussing white identity. It’s about white anxiety. It’s about asking why whiteness has this reflexive need to define itself against immigrant bogey monsters in order to feel comfortable, safe and secure. Why am I saying one thing, and white people are hearing something completely different?

  Often white people ask me, very earnestly, what I think they should do to help end racism. Anti-racist work – the logistics, the strategy, the organising – needs to be led by the people at the sharp end of injustice. But I also believe that white people who recognise racism have an incredibly important part to play. That part can’t be played while wallowing in guilt. White support looks like financial or administrative assistance to the groups doing vital work. Or intervening when you are needed in bystander situations. Support looks like white advocacy for anti-racist causes in all-white spaces. White people, you need to talk to other white people about race. Yes, you may be written off as a radical, but you have much less to lose.

  Talk to other white people who trust you. Talk to white people in the areas of your life where you have influence. If you feel burdened by your unearned privilege, try to use it for something, and use it where it counts. But don’t be anti-racist for the sake of an audience. Being white and anti-racist in your private or professional life, where there’s very little praise to be found, is much more difficult, but ultimately more meaningful. When Jeremy Corbyn MP was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015, it upset many in the political establishment who felt his politics were far too extreme. As he announced his first shadow cabinet, political commentators suddenly found themselves concerned with the fact that the top jobs – shadow foreign secretary, shadow chancellor and shadow home secretary – had gone to white men. A Telegraph column on the topic began: ‘The Labour leader is a white man. His deputy leader is a white man. His shadow chancellor is a white man. His shadow foreign secretary is a white man. His shadow home secretary is a white man. Welcome to the new politics.’1

  This sudden interest in the unbearable whiteness of politics seemed utterly disingenuous to me. This was an example of how the language of liberation causes can be used for political football. When these political commentators discovered anti-racism solely to oppose Jeremy Corbyn, there was no real interest in disrupting the overwhelmingly white political landscape. There was no interest shown in unpacking the race and class standards that marginalise people of colour in the political professions. It was anti-racism for the show of it.

  And online, the performative nature of social media anti-racism couldn’t have been more apparent than in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. In mid-November 2015, suicide bombers detonated their explosive vests in densely populated areas of Paris, while gunmen walked into two restaurants, a bar and the Bataclan Concert Hall, injuring hundreds and leaving 130 people dead.

  The Paris attacks saw an outpouring of grief on social media. Facebook designed a specific statement for its users in Paris to mark themselves as safe from danger. The outpouring of grief led some to ask not just Facebook, but also their peers, why they grieved for some, yet not for others. The answers invariably led to factors like race, development and location – to who does and who doesn’t make a ‘relatable’ victim of terror. And then something very peculiar happened. As the rolling coverage of the Paris attacks continued on traditional news media, the seven-month-old story of terrorist attacks on Kenya’s Garissa University was being shared all over Facebook and Twitter. Two days after the Paris attacks, the Garissa University attack had become the most read on the BBC news website. The news organisation’s trending team reported, ‘About three-quarters of the hits on the story came from social media, rather than from the front page of the BBC news website.’ The report on the phenomenon continued, ‘Around half of the hits on the story came from North America, with another quarter from the UK. In total, the story attracted more than 10 million page views over two days – or about four times as many as it did when the attack actually happened in April.’2

  Here, it seemed, was a war
ped attempt at solidarity with Kenyan people, clumsily wielded to make a point about empathy, race and sympathy after the Paris attacks. It was telling the BBC trending team noted that when the attack happened in April of that year, the reception of social media was utterly lacklustre. The resurfacing of this story in order to elicit grief – or to guilt others who were already grieving – in order to make a point, was nothing but shallow, performative anti-racism. To put it bluntly, Kenyans needed that solidarity, and those social-media shares, back in April. They didn’t need it seven months later, in November, as an act of self-important ‘proof’ that people in the UK and US cared deeply about black and brown countries affected by terrorism in light of press coverage of the Paris attacks. The events in Kenya were cynically used so that people in the UK and US could prove to themselves and to their friends that they were socially aware. That they were one of the good ones. That they believed that black lives matter.

  Solidarity is nothing but self-satisfying if it is solely performative. A safety pin stuck to your lapel after a referendum about the EU that turned into a referendum on immigration is symbolic, but it won’t stop someone from getting deported. We really need to be honest with ourselves, and recognise our own inherent biases, before we think about performing anti-racism for an audience.

  The perverse thing about our current racial structure is that it has always fallen on the shoulders of those at the bottom to change it. Yet racism is a white problem. It reveals the anxieties, hypocrisies and double standards of whiteness. It is a problem in the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve. You can only do so much from the outside.

  After I declared that I no longer wanted to talk to white people about race in 2014, I noticed a sudden upswing in people, white and otherwise, who wanted to hear me talk about race. Everyone wanted to know what I had to say once I had said what I’d always been discouraged from saying. Setting my boundaries had given me a renewed permission to speak.