I have just read "Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race" by British author Reni Eddo-Lodge. I was disappointed.

I have just read "Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race" by British author Reni Eddo-Lodge

This is the goodreads page https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33606119-why-i-m-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

The book originated from a blog post by the author; she wrote about it in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

My opinion of the book is not positive. It's almost as if there were two books, written by two different authors:

One part is a reasonably well-written work on the history and structure of racism, focused on the UK as the author is British (so there will be differences with the US, of course). This part is interesting and well-researched. I do strongly believe that British people should be more familiar with their racist past. "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs" used to be a common sign in Britain. You'd think this was all in the past, but as recently as 2017 we still had Britain' largest private buy-to-let landlord saying: "“No coloured people because of the curry smell at the end of the tenancy.” For clarity, the author does not explicitly comment on these incidents, I am commenting on it for context. [I trust it won't be against the rules to quote racist comments verbatim, as it is clear I am criticising them in the harshest possible way]

In the other part, the author goes completely off the rails, and starts to generalise and to infer conclusions which do not stack up. I don't want to spoil the book nor summarise all of it here, but one single example is very representative of what I mean. The author was discussing with a white, female French friend:

Of course this incident makes the author loses all hope, reinforcing her view that it's pointless to talk to race about white people, etc etc etc

Let's unpack this for a moment.

• She applies for a job.
• The interview, it is not said explicitly but can be inferred, goes reasonably well.
• However, the job goes to someone else: a woman (so no sexism), of the same age (so no ageism) with almost identical experience. Not someone unqualified, not the boss' niece, no: someone with almost identical experience.
• Is this enough to infer racism?

To be clear, what little the author says is not enough to rule out racism. But neither is it sufficient to infer it!!!

Maybe the hiring manager was racist. Maybe they didn't want any non-white people. Or maybe they simply preferred the other candidate for perfectly legitimate reasons which had nothing to do with racism. In the absence of any other information, who can know?

The experience of being passed over for a job by someone of very similar age and experience is an incredibly common one!

However, the problem with Enno-Lodge, and many activists like her, is that race is the only tool they have to interpret the world. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When your only interpretation lens is race, everything must be because of racism. Other interpretations cannot be possible.

Her whole approach seems dishonest, because her arguments are framed in such a way that they are unfalsifiable. "You don't get it, you're white, you have just proven my point" seem to be the standard reply. I wonder what she would say to black people who dare disagree with her. Maybe that they have been brainwashed, proving the power of white racism and therefore proving, once again, their point? Amala Ekpunobi comes to mind, but there are of course countless examples. (Note that the point is not on which topics Ekpunobi is right and the author wrong, but simply that other viewpoints are possible, including among black people).

Of course, falsifiability is a key criterion to deem a hypothesis scientific https://philpapers.org/rec/BOWUNS#:~:text=The%20unfalsifiability%20fallacy%20occurs%20when,for%20deeming%20a%20hypothesis%20scientific. Shame the author doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept.

Her approach doesn't simply fail to be conducive to dialogue, no, it's explicitly hostile to it. The whole undertone is: "we are right, but they won't understand us". So what? Give up any hope? Take power by force? Cry about your victimhood? What? It's unclear.

The underlying message that no single white person will ever be able to understand isn't just flawed – it's outright arrogant, racist and dangerous. Of course "they" don't understand because it's "their" fault, because not one person among "them" can ever understand what "we" went and go through, and if "they" disagree with "us", it's "their" fault – it cannot possibly be that even only one of the things "we" say may be wrong, incomplete or questionable – no, that's of course not possible.