Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(25)

If a person living under the weight of racism wanted to discuss the issues with like-minded people, they might form a group for that purpose. They might opt to call that group a safe space. The concept of a safe space isn’t too outlandish. When it comes to race, it could be anywhere that you felt safe enough to discuss your frustrations about the whiteness of the world without fear of being ostracised. It might be a specific moment in your living room with a relative, over lunch with a close colleague, or in a specially convened activist space. But in the middle of a backlash against any and all anti-racist organising, the phrase ‘safe space’ became another target for white privilege’s rage.

‘Safe spaces is a direct corollary of the rise of identity politics,’ wrote Ian Dunt in the Guardian. ‘As the essentially economic argument between right and left died down, it was replaced by a culture war in which gender, sexuality and race were at the heart of the discussion.’

‘This is the work of privileged, moneyed, over-educated, pampered, middle-class liberal idiots,’ added feminist writer Julie Bindel in the same article.9

I have often had white people get in touch with me, using the words of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr in attempts to prove to me that my work is misguided, that I am doing it wrong. In emails and tweets, I’m told that Martin Luther King, Jr wanted a world in which people were judged not on the colour of their skin, but the content of their character. The intent of these messages suggests to me that these well-wishers believe that, in today’s context, these words are best suited to mean that white people should not be judged on the colour of their skin. That the power of whiteness as a race should not be judged. What those who get in touch with me don’t seem to realise though, is that, published in the June 1963 issue of Liberation Magazine and written from a prison cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr also mused:

‘First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

‘Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.’10

In February 2014, political magazine The Economist published an excited editorial on the rise of mixed-race Britain. Using census data, the piece took an in-depth look at trends across the UK pertaining to mixed-race children. Mixed-race people were the fastest-growing ethnic group in Britain since 2001, the magazine wrote, with 6 per cent of children under the age of five identified as mixed race, a higher number than any other black and ethnic minority group in the country. ‘For the young,’ the article concluded, ‘who are used to having people of all backgrounds in their midst, race already matters far less than it did for their parents. In a generation or two more of the melting pot, it may not matter at all.’11

In Britain’s biggest cities, mixed-race friendships and relationships are now routine rather than controversial. But an increasingly mixed-race Britain makes race relations more complicated, not less. Although nowadays people are much less afraid of living with and loving each other, the problems of racism aren’t going to go away. Despite all of the joys and teachable moments of living cheek to cheek, mixed-race children are not going to end racism through their mere existence. White privilege is never more pronounced than in our intimate relationships, our close friendships and our families.

Race consciousness is not contagious, nor is it inherited. If anything, an increase in mixed-race families and mixed-race children brings those difficult conversations about race and whiteness and privilege closer to home (literally) than ever before. No longer can the injustice be quietly ignored by switching off the news or closing the front door.

Talking to Jessica, who is mixed race, is enlightening. We spoke at length about white privilege and family, and the messy, sometimes deeply painful, nature of talking about race with your nearest and dearest. Because of the sensitive nature of our conversation – and the fact that she still has to maintain these relationships – I’ve changed her name for the purposes of this book.

‘These are difficult conversations to have. It’s quite raw,’ she says. ‘I’ve grown up mainly around my white family. The black side of my family has been affected by domestic violence, which has affected how involved that side of my family has been. For the majority of my thirty years, until the age of twenty-eight, I just didn’t talk about race with my white family. My mum’s white and my dad’s black, and really both my mum and my dad have brought me up in a kind of colour-blind way.’

Unlike me, Jessica can’t choose to just stop talking to white people about race. She doesn’t have the option of desensitising herself from these discussions, because her mum, and half of her extended family, is white.