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.
One thing is consistently clear to me: writing about race taps into a desperate thirst for discussion from those who are affected by the issues. In a way, I can understand that desperation, that feeling of thirst. It’s why I started writing. I got into political commentary because I wanted to change that consensus, to widen the narrow confines of political ideas that were deemed acceptable. But over the years I have realised both the necessity and futility of this job. Attempting to challenge the racism deemed acceptable in political discussion is tacitly tolerated, but making white people feel uncomfortable is impermissible.
If you keep up with news and current affairs, you’ll find that every day there’s a new reason to justify no longer talking to white people about race. There is so much injustice, and there are so many reasons to keep your despair about it to yourself. You might see it, but you won’t dare speak it, for fear of social sanctions. Since I wrote a blog post declaring that I no longer wanted to talk to white people about race, I have come to realise that I’m not alone in my despair. I have come to realise that there are thousands fighting this battle every day. People who want to dismantle racism don’t need to be persuaded or cajoled.
I know that, at first, talking about race is uncomfortable, because too many white people are angry and in denial. And I understand that after white people begin to get it, it’s even more uncomfortable for them to think about how their whiteness has silently aided them in life. A lifetime learning to empathise with white people’s stories means that I get it. But I don’t want white guilt. Neither do I want to see white people wasting precious time profusely apologising rather than actively doing things. No useful movements for change have ever sprung out of fervent guilt.
Instead, get angry. Anger is useful. Use it for good. Support those in the struggle, rather than spending too much time pitying yourself. Unlike white people, people of colour don’t often ask me for advice on what I think they should do to fight racism. Instead, they ask me if I have any good strategies for coping. I don’t have any magic formulas, but I’m a big advocate for setting boundaries when needed. Surround yourself with people who you can draw strength from. If you need to stop talking to white people about race, don’t feel guilty about it. Rest and recharge, so that you’re ready to do your anti-racist work in a sustainable way. I don’t want anyone of any race, when faced with the insurmountable task of challenging racism, to collapse into despondency. As a long-time depressive I know how much it can paralyse, how the feeling of hopelessness works to utterly crush creativity, and passion, and drive. But those are the three things that we will definitely need if we’re ever going to end this injustice. We have to fight despondency. We have to hang on to hope.
In a world where blunt, obvious acts are just the tip of the iceberg of racism, we need to describe the invisible monolith. Now, racism can be found in the way a debate is framed. Now, racism can be found in coded language. Attacking racist frame, form, functions and codes with no words to describe them can make you feel like you are the only one who sees the problem. We need to see racism as structural in order to see its insidiousness. We need to see how it seeps, like a noxious gas, into everything.
In a conversation about structural racism, a friend of mine once made a point that was both glaringly obvious and painfully elusive. Structures, she said, are made out of people. When we talk about structural racism, we are talking about the intensification of personal prejudices, of groupthink. It is rife. But rather than deeming the current situation an absolute tragedy, we should seize it as an opportunity to move towards a collective responsibility for a better society, taking account of the internal hierarchies and intersections along the way.
It doesn’t have to be like this, and the solution starts with us. Racism’s cultural reach is so pervasive that we must take up the mantle of changing our workplaces and social circles ourselves. Often in these conversations, someone will pipe up to say in order to win, we need unity. But I think that if we wait for unity, we’ll be waiting for ever. People are always going to disagree about the finer points of progress. Waiting for unity is just inviting inertia.
So, a word to those who feel the weight of racism, who keenly feel the effects of how it suffocates kindness, and generosity, and potential. How it is slowing down the world we live in. We cannot escape the legacies of the past, but we can use them to model our future. The late Terry Pratchett once wrote ‘there’s no justice. Just us.’ I can’t think of any other phrase that best sums up the task ahead.
It’s on your shoulders and mine to dismantle what we once accepted to be true. It’s our task. It needs to be done with whatever resources we have on hand. We need to change narratives. We need to change the frames. We need to claim the entirety of British history. We need to let it be known that black is British, that brown is British, and that we are not going away. We can’t wait for a hero to swoop in and make things better. Rather than be forced to react to biased agendas, we should outright reject them and set our own. Most importantly, we must survive in this mess, and we do that any way we can.
If you are disgusted by what you see, and if you feel the fire coursing through your veins, then it’s up to you. You don’t have to be the leader of a global movement or a household name. It can be as small scale as chipping away at the warped power relations in your workplace. It can be passing on knowledge and skills to those who wouldn’t access them otherwise. It can be creative. It can be informal. It can be your job. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you’re doing something.
AFTERMATH
This book is nothing without the political climate that greeted it.