Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Stop the denial
Stop the false equivalencies
Interrogate whiteness
Interrogate capitalism
Denounce the white Saviour
Abandon guilt

We need to talk about racial injustice in a new way: one that builds on the revolutionary ideas of the past and forges new connections.

In this robust and nuanced examination of race, class and capitalism, Emma Dabiri draws on years of academic study and lived experience, as well as personal reflections on a year like no other. With intellectual rigour, wit and clarity, Dabiri articulates a powerful vision for meaningful and lasting change.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

Both a blazing polemic against the concept of race as anything more than a means to create racism as well as a fundamental route toward active unification. In this follow-up to her excellent debut, Twisted (2020), Dabiri once again pulls no punches, offering a sharp, relevant critique and deconstruction of racial categorizations, particularly the common assumption of White people as the default norm. "If whiteness is defined as 'not being the other' and the subordination of that other," she writes, "then a reversal of status is deeply threatening to a person's identity." Deploying chapter titles like "Stop the Denial," "Interrogate Capitalism," and "Redistribute Resources," the author is consistently direct and urgent in her presentation. Skewering reductive online commentary and hollow performative gestures, Dabiri writes, "we seem to have replaced doing anything with saying something, in a space where the word 'conversation' has achieved an obscenely inflated importance as a substitute for action." The author also describes inherent deficiencies of allyship--"offering charity at the expense of solidarity"--and makes a compelling case for vigorous coalition-building, which requires recognizing shared interests and working together for the greater good. She references scholars and authors such as Angela Davis, Fred Moten, Barbara Fields, George Lipsitz, bell hooks, and Cornel West to support her studied claims and intentional provocations. "In the history of humankind," she writes, " 'white people' are babies. You have only existed since 1661! (To be fair, so have 'black people.')" Dabiri dismisses Whiteness as "a generic term that collapses crucial distinctions in order to consolidate capital." Related to her argument that the B in black should not be capitalized because it reinforces division instead of dismantling it, she explains that she regularly places quotation marks around "black" and "white" to disrupt "the comfort with which we rely on that terminology." A must-read for anyone seeking to be an agent of much-needed societal change. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Emma Dabiri is a teaching fellow in the African Languages, Cultures and Literatures section of the African department at SOAS, a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths and the author of Don't Touch My Hair , which was an Irish Times bestseller. She has presented several television and radio programmes including BBC Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentaries Journeys into Afro-futurism and Britain's Lost Masterpieces .