What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition

Product Information

Our online conversations today are being informed by this neoliberal, deeply competitive and individualistic energy. This is amplified by ‘ platform capitalism’ [the digital economic ecosystems that make money by enabling third parties to profit] through which people build their brands and activist identities. We live in a different historical moment and we should be alert to those tensions, yet we don’t seem to be.” In the book, you describe social media as a “poison chalice” and a space that “gamifies division”. What do you see as the problems with nominally “progressive” online discourses about race? I can’t stress enough how much impact this book’s had on me, I’ll definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more on how race has shaped our lives and what to do to change it.

Dabiri lives in London, where she is completing her PhD in visual sociology at Goldsmiths while also teaching at SOAS and continuing her broadcast work. [10] [11] She is married and has two children. [5]Dabiri has appeared on the television programmes Have I Got News For You, Portrait Artist of the Year. [12] and Question Time. Dabiri uses a similar term,“Dúthchas”, which she explains as an “ancient Scottish Gaelic ecological principle of interconnectedness between people, the land and non-human beings. Dúthchas speaks to the type of coexistence that we are now perhaps too late recognising the utter necessity of if we are going to survive.” So we’re forced to define ourselves, "insert race/gender/sexuality/class/disability." and as a consequence we are divided, and each fighting for their groups rights when, in the end we’re all fighting for the same reason: Collective Liberation. Before 1661, the idea of “white people” as a foundational “truth” did not exist. The Barbados Slave Code, officially known as An Act for the Better Ordaining and Governing of Negroes, announced the beginning of a legal system in which race and racism were codified into law, and is where our understanding of “White” and “Negro”—as separate and distinct “races”—finds its earliest expression.’ The book in question is, of course, What White People Can Do Next, which has become a smash hit since it first launched in April. After a year fraught with the reality of racism, it had felt to me like despite the abundant “discourse” about racism, there was still very little to actually be hopeful about in terms of real change. Dabiri’s book provides a tonic: a palette cleanser to the neo-liberal approach of dismantling racism we’ve grown accustomed to.

Emma Dabiri: It's very interesting for me because this is an area that I've been involved in for years and years. It's really interesting to see something that at one stage to talk about was incredibly taboo and very fringe, actually, to become increasingly mainstream and then completely turbo-charged by the events of 2020. I've seen a phenomenal change occur. I recently read 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘰 𝘕𝘦𝘹𝘵 by @emmadabiri and felt inspired to share my main takeaways from this insightful, radical essay. Not good enough. What we need is coalition. A collective commitment to empathy and change based on the foundations of both self-examination and grounded critical thought, aimed at the mechanisms of exploitation, which is capitalism. The nature of social media is such that the performance of saying something often trumps doing anything ; the tendency to police language, to shame and to say the right thing often outweighs more substantive efforts.’ I found big government, socialist politics, wealth redistribution at the heart of the book. Rather than rouse the working proletariat a hundred years ago to dig their own graves, this author is hoping to spur the bourgeoisie to do so by abandon capitalism to solve racism. Otherwise, it’s the same book Marx wrote

Toys

It wasn't until the elite passed laws that segregated poorer white people from slaves – by weaponising whiteness and attaching it to superiority and privilege – that racism was birthed in a bid to settle white on white tension. Bottom line at the beginning because I'm going to be rambling a lot: Don’t make whiteness the protagonist of your speech! Don’t be patronizing! Don’t just engage in social media activism! Read, read, read, and dance! Yes, predating t’internet, when 'I’ll fax you' was grunted down a phone with a cord attached to it; when Glastonbury was still accessible by casually going under or over a flimsy fence; when gatecrashing a Foo Fightersaftershow party was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy and tapping Dave Grohl on the shoulder was... oh sorry I like to ramble. In truth, what the year of the pandemic, more so than any other, has taught me is that I have no expectations of any 'racial' group. How could millions of heterogeneous people live up to any one singular expectation of mine?"

In the spirit of We Should All Be Feminists and How to Be an Antiracist, a poignant and sensible guide to questioning the meaning of whiteness and creating an antiracist world from the acclaimed historian and author of Twisted. Hazel Chu: But there are certain things that need discussion. Perfect example: [the publication of] the white paper for Direct Provision. That requires discussion. Instead what happened was rhetoric being pushed on one, then the defence being pushed on the other side. Then what happens is, you don't have a middle conversation. You don't actually look at what needs to be done. I think in society, we're all about compromise on some things. We're all trying to reach some kind of "medium". I get the feeling it's become more and more [about] extremes rather than middle of the road. After an onslaught of widespread uncertainty and brutal instability, we all need a guiding map to help us move forward together. What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition, Emma Dabiri’s second book, pioneers urgent new roads to social change and new forms of dialogue. There is a lot to digest in this book and I would suggest you take your time with it or return to it regularly. I was buzzing after reading it in a similar way to hearing a fresh song. In Read Read Read and Dance, I was moved by a discussion on the importance of non-linguistic modes of rebellion. Hip hop, jazz improv, dance and other musical and sonic mediums hold space for freedom and connection, as Dabiri says we need to “think less with our eyes”.

Christmas Cards & Gift Wrap

I'm so glad that I requested the book and that I actually got it. I'm especially glad that I didn't leave in on my kindle app forever (like I always do), but that I read it right away. Emma Dabiri: I don't think they automatically do. I feel that they've been conditioned to. That's why race exists. That's why these things exist, because it takes the heat off the real source of the inequality and the deprivation and the pain and the suffering and the oppression that people are actually experiencing… It's a very effective mythology.

T]he sense of superiority encoded into whiteness remains a very effective ruse to distract “white people” from the oppression many of them experience keenly; the pressure of financial precariousness, the unaffordability of a home, the erosion of healthcare and education, or any of the other countless deprivations endured while trying to “make a living” in a world that has become increasingly unlivable.’ There are a new generation of people coming up, who see the contradictions and problems in the form of activism that I'm critical of in the book. They're very astute thinkers. People who are joining the dots between capitalism, class, race and the environment. Young activists, such as Mikaela Loach, are doing just this.

Any Racialized Group of People Have Very Different Responses to Each Other

I would recommend this book as it offers clear points that cause you to question your behaviour and provides you with new ways of thinking without conforming to the terms and advice of online discourse surrounding anti-racism. Most importantly, this book is for everyone. We should also appreciate that we have an academic like Emma Dabiri writing as if James Connolly and Audre Lorde had a love child. Here, in conversation with Chu, both women discuss the roots of racism and why now is the time to move from allyship – the practice of supporting the cause of marginalised or mistreated groups to which you do not belong – to coalition: working together to achieve a common goal. It's necessary to realize that whether or not you are on the "right" side of history, most of us have been guilty of painting a broad brush over any one group of people with expectations of how they should behave or what they would think. Much like people of color differ in their thinking, so do white people in their responses to each other. Understanding this idea and stepping outside of our echo chamber is crucial to bridging the gap between progressive peoples and harmful political movements like #AllLivesMatter or #NotAllMen. We Haven't Been Taught to Work Together, but Now Is the Time to Learn Vital and empowering What White People Can Do Nextteaches each of us how to be agents of change in the fight against racism and the establishment of a more just and equitable world. In this affecting and inspiring collection of essays, Emma Dabiri draws on both academic discipline and lived experience to probe the ways many of us are complacent and complicit—and can therefore combat—white supremacy. She outlines the actions we must take, including: