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Reni Eddo-Lodge

  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    just can’t engage with the bewilderment and the defensiveness as they try to grapple with the fact that not everyone experiences the world in the way that they do. They’ve never had to think about what it means, in power terms, to be white, so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact, they interpret it as an affront
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    The journey towards understanding structural racism still requires people of colour to prioritise white feelings. Even if they can hear you, they’re not really listening
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    So I can’t talk to white people about race any more because of the consequent denials, awkward cartwheels and mental acrobatics that they display when this is brought to their attention. Who really wants to be alerted to a structural system that benefits them at the expense of others
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    It must be a strange life, always having permission to speak and feeling indignant when you’re finally asked to listen. It stems from white people’s never-questioned entitlement, I suppose
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    So I’m no longer talking to white people about race. I don’t have a huge amount of power to change the way the world works, but I can set boundaries
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    ’m not talking to white people about race unless I absolutely have to. If there’s something like a media or conference appearance that means that someone might hear what I’m saying and feel less alone, then I’ll participate. But I’m no longer dealing with people who don’t want to hear it, wish to ridicule it and, frankly, don’t deserve it
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    I stopped talking to white people about race because I don’t think giving up is a sign of weakness. Sometimes it’s about self-preservation
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    I’ve turned ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ into a book – paradoxically – to continue the conversation. Since I set my boundary, I’ve done almost nothing but speak about race – at music festivals and in TV studios, to secondary-school pupils and political party conferences – and the demand for this conversation shows no signs of subsiding
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    Since I wrote that blog post in 2014, things have changed a lot for me. I now spend most of my time talking to white people about race. The publishing industry is very white, so there’s no way I could have got this book published without talking to at least some white people about race.
  • Lucinda Garzahas quotedlast year
    I write – and read – to assure myself that other people have felt what I’m feeling too, that it isn’t just me, that this is real, and valid, and true. I am only acutely aware of race because I’ve been rigorously marked out as different by the world I know for as long as I can remember.
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