Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race: The Sunday Times Bestseller

It felt like everywhere, public opinion was veering towards hostility. The drawbridges came up and the atmosphere turned sharp.

Oral histories from black people who lived through this time tend to maintain one common thread – that the police were not protecting them.

In it is an implication that it’s class, not race, that is the true battle to be fought in Britain – and that we have to choose between one or the other. I totally reject this assumption. But I’m going to try and answer the question.

That same year, the government introduced the British Nationality Act – a law that effectively gave Commonwealth citizens the same rights to reside as British subjects.

But I soon realised that any number of authentic emotions I displayed could and would be interpreted as anger. My assertiveness, passion and excitement could all be wielded against me.

Both obsessively focus on a woman’s looks and how covered or uncovered her body is in determining

An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost, an absence of ‘less likely to succeed because of my race’.

We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power.

In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon – earned or not – because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the sys