Reni Eddo-Lodge, About Race Podcast
Reni’s outstanding book ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” is a must read and she recently celebrated becoming the first Black British author to top the UK book charts - an experience that has been understandably bittersweet. When speaking to the Guardian about its success Reni noted:
To know there was a surge of people searching out anti-racism books after seeing what was essentially a film of somebody being murdered, I can’t uncouple those two things. I think there is something very poignant about the seismic shift it has been a catalyst for, but ultimately the kicking-off event was watching someone die, and that is quite a source of conflict for me. The aim of anti-racism work isn’t to make me personally wealthy, and so some of this capital flowing my way will go to donate, to contribute to the cause in some way.
If you’ve read the book (if you haven’t, you know what you need to do), then you’ll definitely enjoy the podcast. It takes the themes and conversations a step further in episodes covering the historic white working class narrative, political blackness and the violence in white feminism. The podcast features voices like Riz Ahmed, Nish Kumar and Sisters Uncut and build a picture of how recent history has developed the politics of today. These essential conversations need to be part of the ongoing learning and unlearning we all commit to, recently Reni noted the biggest challenge to racism in her eyes:
“We live in a country that tries to pride itself on fair play but is really resistant to any attempt to analyse what fair play actually looks like. It’s a faux politeness that is really invested in the proper way to do things, rather than justice.
If you’re really interested in creating anti-racist change, you have to look around you and see where you hold the influence and that is very different from one person to the next. We all know, for example, in the media the answer is to fundamentally shake up the industry with diversity, all the stuff people have been saying for years.”
In 2018, Reni spoke to Krishnan Guru-Murthy as part of channel 4’s “ways to change the world series” about not talking to white people about race, quotas at work and how she would change the world. Much of this conversation is still relevant today and I recommend giving it a listen when you have the chance.
The podcast has hit number 1 on Apple an amazing 2 years after the last episode was published and has passed 1 million listens - when you consider that it’s a short 9 episode series you can really see its fierce popularity.
I was going to pick out specific episodes to recommend to you but to be honest the list got too long, so start from the beginning linked here and I know that the conversation will leave you wanting to listen to the next and the next. You can join the conversation online by following Reni on Twitter, Instagram, or follow #aboutracewithreni..