This month’s randomish pick for the Legendary Book Club on Habitica is Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge. I’ve been seeing it around a fair bit, but haven’t read it — and then there it was, in a buy-one-get-one-half-price sale in Waterstones. It seemed like the ideal time, so I added it to the stack, and now it’s my pick for the book club run solely by my own caprice.
I’m particularly interested in the fact that it’s based on experiences of race from a British non-white perspective. So much of the discourse online is based around the experience of black people in the US, which I’ve always been convinced is a different kettle of fish — cue the protests of white Americans who think that I’m being racist to suggest that maybe race isn’t experienced in the same way universally. The idea that it might be different for a African-American person born in the South whose family has been in the US since the 1700s and a hijabi born in Bradford whose parents emigrated as children… is not really widely considered, at least in the circles I run in. The model of racism discussed online has always been rather US-based, ignoring those differences. (And of course the inevitable differences in the ingrained ways of thinking about race.)
I’m also interested because people have such a kneejerk reaction to it, but often when you actually read pieces like that, it turns out the title is really all a lot of other folks have read. (See also: Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit. So much kneejerk angsting from men over an essay that is plainly talking about the habits of a certain kind of man.)
So that’s the background! Assuming I actually get to reading this book within the month this time (alas for The Genius Plague), I’ll try and get a review up and maybe even a discussion post. For now, feel free to comment here if you’ve read the book/plan to read it/think it’s obvious rot from the title alone, and let’s chat!
