Reni Eddo-Lodge

When I was four, I asked my mum when I would turn white, because all the good people on TV were white, and all the villains were black and brown. I considered myself to be a good person, so I thought that I would turn white eventually.

It’s so difficult to describe an absence. And white privilege is an absence of the negative consequences of racism.

But white privilege is the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it.

I have to be honest with myself. When I write as an outsider, I am also an insider in so many ways. I am university-educated, able-bodied, and I speak and write in ways very similar to those I criticise. I walk and talk like them, and part of that is why I am taken seriously

This is the difference between racism and prejudice. There is an unattributed definition of racism that defines it as prejudice plus power.

White privilege manifests itself in everyone and no one. Everyone is complicit, but no one wants to take on responsibility. Challenging it can have real social implications.

Because it’s a many-headed hydra, you have to be careful about the white people you trust when it comes to discussing race and racism. You don’t have the privilege of approaching conversations about racism with the assumption that the other participants will be on the same plane as you. Raising racism in a conversation is like flicking a switch.

white victimhood’:6 an effort by the powers that be to divert conversations about the effects of structural racism in order to shield whiteness from much-needed rigorous criticism.

In theory, nobody has a problem with anti-racism. In practice, as soon as people start doing anti-racist things, there is no end to the slew of commentators who are convinced anti-racists are doing it wrong. It even happens among people who consider themselves to be progressive

This left-wing writer was angrier at people’s reactions to racism than the racism itself. This was the beginning of a backlash against conversations about white privilege