Another big problem is the mixed messages. On the one hand, ‘silence is violence’, but then on the other hand, it’s ‘you can never understand this, so you shouldn't be in this conversation’. In the past, there wasn’t this demanding of obsequious language from people. No matter what you do, it's not the right thing. I despair at the demands of allyship that exists today, like the online pile ons. It often never gets past this very gladiatorial accusatory space online. The real work of coalition building never happens, because it's just grounded in this toxic language and the bigger picture is obscured. It doesn't feel very strategic, it feels more like interpersonal grievances being expressed and settled." Do you see the rise of nationalism a threat to coalition and dismantling racism? The author proposes coalition over allyship as a way to achieve this, defining the latter as an individualistic process that would only separate us more. Instead "coalition is about mutuality. It reframes the task as identifying common ground—while attending to the specificities of racism—that all can strive for and that all will benefit from." It’s solidarity as opposed to charity. She bases this, on coalition building that have work in the past.

I felt it lent an accessibility to the topics that put the reader somewhat at ease and more open to contemplating the questions she is posing. Indeed the 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... zero hours contract, the unaffordability of a home, erosion of healthcare and education; as a white person your ‘race’ isn’t one of the impediments to you achieving the good life; the game is still rigged.” Dabiri urges us to outright refuse the options of social change we have been presented with and begin the discussion on a new way of being.

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

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. 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.’ a b Ganatra, Shilpa (27 April 2019). "Emma Dabiri: 'I wouldn't want my children to experience what I did in Ireland' ". Irish Times . Retrieved 29 April 2019.

Dabiri’s stance on anti-racism & allyship may seem radical and/or polarising to some, especially post-2020, but her penchant for asking questions is an inspiration and revealed such a wealth of information with much food for thought + many recommendations for future reading/self-education with the quotes she has included. I foresee a rabbit hole in my very near future. 🤓

Racialized Thinking and "White Guilt" Are Holding Us Back From Progress

we should try to understand our lives as a dynamic flowing of positions" as opposed to the rigid identity norms that have been imposed by capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Emma’s interrogation of whiteness explores how racism (and other subsequent results of isolative measures including colourism, featurism and texturism) is deeply rooted in capitalist agendas aimed at wealth creation and retention. This is jumping on the bandwagon behind DeAngelo and Kendhi and the other con artists praying on people's good intentions, leveraging tragedies and historical unfairness [too the tune of original sin, martyrdom, self-flagellation, repentance confession, hail maries, and all the trappings of a new inquisitory religion]. It seems to be so easy to complain about “the system” and its “permanent or structural” problems while profiting from those systems. I doubt these authors have forsaken their phones, laptops, cars, clothes, etc. All proceeds from these books should HAVE to be donated to other non-published authors. After all, that’s how collective works right? the few work for the many? Equal in everything (mostly poverty but whatever right?) By examining the attitudes of poorer white people during 16th century US settlement, we find that capitalism was created to uphold the elite.

Capitalism has colonized the most intimate quarters of human experience." Capitalism evolved into a competitive, highly individualistic system, and that defines the way we interact with each other, the environment and it motivates the way activism is being made. Interpersonal privilege over equality. Many of the cherished categories of the intersectional mantra—originally starting with race, class, gender, now including sexuality, nation, religion, age, and disability—are the products of modernist colonial agendas and regimes of epistemic violence, operative through a Western/Euro-American formation through which the notion of discrete identity has emerged.’ Dabiri holds a Western Marxist's critique of capitalism, and in What White People Can Do Next, she dedicates a chapter to "Interrogate Capitalism", building upon the ideas of Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, and Frantz Fanon. [ according to whom?] [9] Western Marxism places greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society. Dabiri summarizes: "In fact, in many ways race and capitalism are siblings", while "capitalism exists, racism will continue". [9]

She also argues that simply “calling people out” is not as helpful as taking action in movements against those actions, but adds ‘ do both if you must, but certainly don’t let the latter distract you from the former.’ Much is to be said about the ways we play into capitalism algorithms that market our ideas for profit by participating in them, and she expands on this in interesting ways. Vital and empowering What White People Can Do Next teaches 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, Stop the Denial This was an intelligent, thought-provoking and educating essay. It looks at what white people need to actually do to create change in relation to racial justice. Naming whiteness is necessary; it is the ‘invisibility’ of white people, who are presented just as ‘people’, the default norm from which everyone else deviates.”