Emma Dabiri book review: A battle cry against racism for even the most socially aware

Politics What White People Can Do Next Emma Dabiri Penguin, 176 pages, paperback €11.20; e-book £4.99

Emma Dabiri. Photo by Stuart Simpson

April 10 2021 02:30 AM

It's the title that is immediately arresting. The 'next' in Dabiri's book title, of course, alludes to the aftermath of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd, but also refers to centuries of racial injustice and prejudice.

Online discourse on race relations and allyship has risen to a blizzard, urgent and energetic but with plenty of white noise too. If ever we needed a steady hand on the rudder of this particular conversation, it is now. Emma Dabiri, an academic and the author of Don't Touch My Hair, is the person to do it.

"I wasn't made particularly angry by the events of 2020, because in terms of racism it was just business as usual," Dabiri writes. "I had already been angry, had spent most of my life angry, at racial injustice, at inequality, at the intentional impoverishment of Africa and the global south, but more latterly angry also at the inconsistencies, contradictions and hypocrisies that seem to characterise so much online 'activism' and, perhaps, the current model of activism itself more generally."

First things first; most racial discourse has been led by US writers and refers to the culture there. Dabiri, Dublin-born but now living in the UK, creates a thesis that includes the Irish experience.

What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri

She knows all too well that there is a thirst for change, but many people who profess to be allies are either unclear or uncertain as to how to bring it about.

What White People Can Do Next is an expanded version of a well-received online resource that she created in response to this. As she sensibly notes, even the most well-meaning and informed white allies of people of colour can get it wrong.

Being an ally is not about performative acts of compassion or charity. Paying lip service to inclusivity does not let you off the hook. Charity and favours, Dabiri notes, can be withheld or used as a sort of social leverage. That's not what true equality is about.

"I've seen way too many guides talking about the ally and the 'victim'," she writes. "In short, I find a lot of the discourse patronising. One of the things that allyship fails to address is the fact that you can continue to view black people as inferior while still being committed to their 'protection'. The more you state and claim your 'whiteness', without doing any further work to unpack what that means, the more you become fixed to that articulation of self, the more you become wedded to whiteness."

Instead of focusing on privilege, Dabiri offers a way out of racial tensions with a more gladdening emphasis on what we all have in common, and on the shortcomings of capitalism, which she argues is inextricably linked to colonialism.

Her chapter headings - 'Stop the Denial'; 'Interrogate Whiteness'; 'Denounce the White Saviour'; 'Abandon Guilt'; 'Redistribute Resources' - hint at the central thesis. "Do not expect to be taught or shown," she writes. "Take it upon yourself to use the tools around you to learn and answer your questions."

In one chapter, 'Read, Read, Read (And Dance)', she advises readers not to rely on the internet for guidance. "I mean, I completely understand 'Google is your friend' as a throwaway comment to some dickhead on the internet who is trying to derail conversations about race with inane questions, but as a tenet of allyship it's pretty dire," Dabiri says.

"Reading is my portal to other forms of action, and I urge you to read, read, read too. I don't just mean read 'anti-racist' books. Black people cannot be reduced to our experiences of white racism; that's whiteness centring itself again."

Elsewhere, in her chapter 'Recognise This Shit Is Killing You Too', she recalls an instance when she noted that inequality and exploitation were poisoning the planet.

"When I posted the online resource that inspired this book, a 'white' woman commented on this particular point, saying something to the effect of, 'Yes - this is so right, this is killing me too, I mean it's just so painful for me to see my black brothers and sisters suffering so much.' I address that misinterpretation here because, quite to the contrary, I was shifting the emphasis away from this type of pitying (white) saviour/(black) victim trope, yet somehow yer wan was bringing it back round to the very thing I hoped my work was undoing."

This book is intended to raise uneasy questions, dismantle long-held beliefs and spark unwelcome thoughts. It is designed to make white people who have been coasting on their own notions of 'racial equality' question themselves. This might not be an easy thing, but Dabiri's reflections have been a very, very long time coming.

While she is doubtless eloquent and clear-eyed, her deftly polemical and intellectual writing is likely to overwhelm a reader for whom identity politics, and race relations in general, are a new and unfamiliar entity.

Still, at 175 or so pages, What White People Can Do Next is a slim volume, but a concise, sure-footed and complete one. Dabiri doesn't profess to offer neat, hopeful solutions to inequality: it's up to the reader to make this happen. It's tempting to think that the readers who are likely to pick this book up, based on its rousing battle cry of a title, are the well-meaning people who don't need quite as much guidance as others.

But as Dabiri points out, even the most socially aware and just of us could use a little schooling.