‘If we all embraced the need for greater justice, everyone would benefit.’ Photo: Book cover of What White People Can Do Next: From allyship to coalition, by Emma Dabiri
What White People Can Do Next: From allyship to coalition, by Emma Dabiri
Author: Emma Dabiri. Review by Jonathan Doering
After Derek Chauvin’s sentencing for the murder of George Floyd, Floyd’s sister, Bridgett, said: ‘The sentence… shows that matters of police brutality are finally being taken seriously. However, we have a long way to go… before black and brown people finally feel like they are being treated fairly and humanely by law enforcement.’ The rest of us may well ask ‘What should we do next?’
Responses to that question are many and varied. Positively, Black Lives Matter has built tremendous momentum. A spotlight has finally been shone on the equity divide between white and BAME citizens, and many institutions have begun perhaps their most meaningful probes into attitudes towards ethnicity, colour and nationality. Negatively, those with interests in keeping the status quo have sought to tighten their grip on the levers of power. We have seen denials of institutional racism in Britain, and attacks on activists. On many levels it seems, depressingly, to be business as usual. Against such a volatile backdrop, one thing we are beholden to do is to look closely and reflect – not only about the world, but also when we look into the mirror. Emma Dabiri’s book, acute with asperity, hard-hitting yet humorous, is a key text offering a useful blueprint.
The book is subtitled ‘From allyship to coalition’. I understand this as a passing from objective to subjective, impersonal to implicated. Dabiri adroitly marshals some impressive historical research, building a compelling argument in favour of positive social, political and economic change, while melting several golden calves – not least the immutability of the very concept of race.
Running throughout is a deliberately discomfiting call to challenge our system. Dabiri spares little, including many of the well-meaning responses of white folk: ‘the idea that anti-racism is an act of grace that benefits the poor black victim obscures the psychological investment in, as well as the costs of, “whiteness”, the losses that are imbibed from its poisoned chalice, for “white” people too.’ One of Dabiri’s most explosive notions is that racial distinctions are largely fictitious categorisations constructed within a relentless, evil, and brilliantly-effective divide-and-rule policy. The presence of these pernicious social forces in such magnitude is instrumental: ‘capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy have reduced and press-ganged people into servitude.’
Modern tenets of racial distinction are traced to enslavement codes drawn up in the 1600s. These were intended to drive a wedge between enslaved black and indentured white workers, who had previously made common cause against their masters (these rebellions have, tellingly, not made it into many history books). This policy of erasure has recurred with frightening regularity. Dabiri offers some striking examples here, including Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, which elicited the first strategic racist legislation.
The roots of prejudice and inequality worm their way in and through everything, unless we keep an inward (and outward) watch. Inequity and injustice are not confined to the sphere of race and ethnicity, but infect all spheres of human life: class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and the environment are some of the most obvious. One danger of this is that the picture can become so large and dark that, if we’re not at the very top or bottom of the heap, it is all too easy to throw our hands up in despair of ever making clear sense of it, still less taking meaningful action.
Dabiri builds a convincing case for the ethical rightness, and also the pragmatic good sense, of greater intra-community solidarity. She provides data suggesting that, while a disgustingly high proportion of BAME citizens suffer from police misconduct and violence, a startling number of white people also suffer from it too. If we all embraced the need for greater social, political, economic and environmental justice, everyone would benefit, not only the most dispossessed.
Needless to say Damascene moments of insight are not sufficient. Here Dabiri quotes George Lipsitz: ‘Good intentions and spontaneity are not adequate in the face of relentlessly oppressive and powerful well-financed military and economic political systems.’ So many of us, comfortably perched around the middle of the pile, may ask ‘What can I do?’ Dabiri’s answer at this point will, I suspect, appeal to many Friends. She exhorts readers to dig deeply into oneself and one’s society, in order to learn and change. We need to seriously educate ourselves: the history of how and why things are as they are; the nature of our economic, political and social systems; the hardwired interconnections reinforcing prejudice, fear, passivity, greed; and how those interconnections interpenetrate us and our relationships. This includes going into ourselves and honestly confronting our own prejudices. We have been been surreptitiously brainwashed into compliance, trained into particular, easy patterns of action and inaction.
All of this is electrifying on many levels. I recommend Dabiri’s understanding of the concept of race, which exposes it as a toxic, sticky construct attached to human relations in order to control people effectively. There is another way, and we can – must – find it together.
There are three caveats that need to be considered. Firstly, Dabiri’s thesis appears to be that racism in our understanding of it is a largely modern construct. Certainly, racism as we know it may well have been the result of enslavement. On the other hand, Elizabeth I drew up draft proclamations for the expulsion of black immigrants to England in 1596 and 1601. While historical evidence suggests that these may not have proceeded beyond drafts, and that they were drawn up in response to racism and self-interest on the part of merchants and traders, it does suggest that racism in some form already existed. Looking further back, we find examples such as the 1290 Expulsion Edict against England’s Jews by Edward I. Prejudice seems to have been long used by those in power for their own malign purposes. Of course, Dabiri is writing polemic here, meant to challenge; I have no quarrel with her argument in favour of a community where difference is embraced, worked with lovingly and constructively.
Secondly, Dabiri analyses the concept of ‘allyship’ in a sharp and provocative manner. While I completely agree that any attitude of white saviourism is morally wrong and counter-productive, I wonder if a total rejection of the term ‘allyship’ is necessary. The concept is not intrinsically condescending; it suggests that those of mutual interest work alongside each other. How you do something is as significant as what you do. If one seeks to act as an ally in the right, open, humble spirit, then perhaps it matches Dabiri’s preferred term of ‘coalition’.
Thirdly, towards the end the book took a step which made me raise my eyebrows. Dabiri quotes David Abram’s understanding of humans as ‘sensitive thresholds rather than… bounded entities’, and Terence McKenna’s remarks about how psychedelic substances ‘dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour’. She then reiterates her own main thesis that there must be a sea-change in attitudes and behaviour in order to remake the world. While I can objectively understand the factual truth of both quotes, I can only fully accept the first. Psychedelics may very well dissolve many social attitudes and structures that imprison us, but they often do so at the risk of physical, emotional and mental harm. The memory of a very kind, gentle and sadly messed-up colleague who had experimented with mind-altering substances is forever etched on my memory.
I happily endorse Dabiri’s closing remarks: ‘We need to do things differently. It can no longer be business as usual. It is a matter of urgency that we craft responses to racism that don’t themselves reinforce a re-investment in racial categories as absolute and unchanging facts of life.’ For me, Quaker worship and fellowship have illustrated the concept of ‘sensitive thresholds’, with a critique of constrictive social attitudes and models of behaviour. I believe the Light wishes this for everyone, without recourse to external substances, no matter their religious affiliations.
Overall though, these are cavils along the way. The destination Dabiri indicates is one that we should work for, shoulder to shoulder. What looms far larger is Dabiri’s encouragement of her readers to inform themselves through deep reading, observation, and reflection. Also, her exhortation to ‘Dance… for a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.’ I may not accept all the means of consciousness-raising offered here, but the overall manifesto is important.
We pray for George Floyd and his family, and for Derek Chauvin and his family. We pray for the growth of love and solidarity. We must ask ourselves what we can – must – do to help build this growing reality.
