What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition

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The book in question is, of course, What White People Can Do Next, which has become a smash hit since it first launched in April. After a year fraught with the reality of racism, it had felt to me like despite the abundant “discourse” about racism, there was still very little to actually be hopeful about in terms of real change. Dabiri’s book provides a tonic: a palette cleanser to the neo-liberal approach of dismantling racism we’ve grown accustomed to. Brinkhurst-Cuff, Charlie (23 April 2019). "Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri review – groundbreaking". The Guardian.

Emma Dabiri: It's very interesting for me because this is an area that I've been involved in for years and years. It's really interesting to see something that at one stage to talk about was incredibly taboo and very fringe, actually, to become increasingly mainstream and then completely turbo-charged by the events of 2020. I've seen a phenomenal change occur. Dabiri’s book, an evolution of that resource she initially shared, offers insightful, practical and thought-provoking guidance that moves discourse away from the often entrenched and passive performance of allyship and towards the ushering in of a new era of coalition-building, something that has been stymied in the past by racist, colonialist and capitalist forces. This is jumping on the bandwagon behind DeAngelo and Kendhi and the other con artists praying on people's good intentions, leveraging tragedies and historical unfairness [too the tune of original sin, martyrdom, self-flagellation, repentance confession, hail maries, and all the trappings of a new inquisitory religion]. It seems to be so easy to complain about “the system” and its “permanent or structural” problems while profiting from those systems. I doubt these authors have forsaken their phones, laptops, cars, clothes, etc. All proceeds from these books should HAVE to be donated to other non-published authors. After all, that’s how collective works right? the few work for the many? Equal in everything (mostly poverty but whatever right?)One of my hopes with the book is, I want people to join the dots and see connections between things that they might not have seen previously. I want different people experiencing different forms of oppression connecting. All these people joining those dots together and forming a coalition instead of being pitted against one another. That's what excites me and what my work is trying to do.” The nature of social media is such that the performance of saying something often trumps doing anything, the tendency to police language, to shame and to say the right thing, often outweighs more substantive efforts. "

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of modern, liberal identity politics and online activism that digs up a lot of points I agree with. But it’s often co-opted to delegitimise the violence and discrimination people of colour (and minority and indigenous people in general) face, and how they can be cut off from resources and communities of care, whilst taking and truncating the most ‘cringe’ parts of ‘identity politics’ into the totality of people’s goals for change. Appropriating MLK Jr’s vision of colour-blindness whilst downplaying the scale of racism and exculpating external institutions and forces (whether it’s a carceral system or every day racism) of blame and responsibility. Criticising identity politics has also become a bit of an infantile, bad faith industry of its own. I think this book was able to challenge and hold both accountable, which we need more of. Naming whiteness is necessary; it is the ‘invisibility’ of white people, who are presented just as ‘people’, the default norm from which everyone else deviates.” Hazel Chu: I'll put my hand up first and foremost and say, "yeah, we are in government, we need to do more in the area." Everyone can put up their hands in different ways. There is a lot to digest in this book and I would suggest you take your time with it or return to it regularly. I was buzzing after reading it in a similar way to hearing a fresh song. In Read Read Read and Dance, I was moved by a discussion on the importance of non-linguistic modes of rebellion. Hip hop, jazz improv, dance and other musical and sonic mediums hold space for freedom and connection, as Dabiri says we need to “think less with our eyes”. If we're talking about it being opportunities and resources, then that's something that can't occur on an individual level, it has to be created through the cultivation of more equal societies. And that requires this analysis of class and capitalism that no one's engaging with.” What makes you hopeful that allyship will grow into a coalition of change?Emma Dabiri: I certainly feel like it's a trend as well, because if it wasn't a trend, there would be more enduring [change]. So much of the ways things are being framed now is stuff that just isn't sustainable, and is not going to bring about lasting change. It's all quite performative. It's all quite surface level. I don't want it to be a squandered opportunity, because the thing is, I've never experienced such a willingness for people to engage with these issues and have these conversations. Hazel Chu: To Emma's point, it's funny, the line is whiteness got in the way. I constantly get a line "your history isn't our history because Chinese history is different." Look at where Hong Kong was even before 1997. Look at how the Opium Wars happened. Look at Ireland and what happened in the Famine. The shared history is across the world, but we tend to not notice it. The proclamation there outside my office says you cherish all children equally, because they didn't see the colouring, whereas racists see colouring and apply that as almost the counter-narrative of "oh we were colonised, and we can't [ allow that] happen again by other people." What this has shifted in my thinking as well, is seeing racism as a thing that is working. Not just as domination of one group of people over another group of people or as a contemporary structural issue. But as a historical project designed to conquer and divide people against their best interests.

Stop vehemently denying you are racist. What makes you immune to centuries of socialisation? "It's a system we've been born into, of which you have no control. What you DO have control over is what you do next."With its reliance on information rather than knowledge, its fetishizing of privilege without any clear means of transfereal, as well as the ways in which it actively reinforces whiteness, allyship is not only not up to the task, it is in many ways counterproductive.’