Against Color-Blindness: Anglo-American Trajectories of Racism in Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and White Rage

Abstract

Topics relating to race and experiences of racism are made visible through literary texts such as Carol Anderson’s White Rage and Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. This paper examines the ways in which the two texts address historical trajectories of racism and how they suggest these histories should be dealt with in the present, drawing on Michael Rothberg’s theory of implication in oppressive and unjust pasts. The paper engages with these notions while also exploring Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s critique of color-blindness and post-racialism. The two texts provide an opportunity to examine potential avenues for and ways of dealing with legacies of racial inequality; legacies that inevitably persist in the present moment, taking new shapes and forms.

New ways of addressing race and racism have been called for in recent years, particularly through the writing of, among others, Reni Eddo Lodge and Carol Anderson. Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (2018; originally published in 2017) starts with the announcement that the author will no longer speak to white people about race, as the title itself indicates, due to lack of perspective and receptiveness with regard to experiences of people of color. Anderson embarks on a journey through racial and racialized history in the United States in her book White Rage (2017; originally published in 2016), outlining the detrimental and discriminatory effects various legislative, social, and political measures have had on the African American population since the end of slavery. Both texts raise questions about history and what to do with historical trajectories of racism persisting in the present, and this issue is also at the center of this paper. Eddo-Lodge writes from a British context and Anderson from an American one, providing insights from different locations.

This paper asks how trajectories of racism are addressed in Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s texts and examines what the two writers suggest as a way forward for victims and perpetrators of racism past and present. The paper also engages with those deemed implicated subjects, drawing on Michael Rothberg’s (2019) publication The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, which offers novel perspectives on how to deal with history in terms of those connected to oppressive and unjust pasts. Rothberg (2019, p. 10) argues in his book that “there is a need for a larger reckoning with both the structures of power that undergird such cases and the histories that continue to resonate as afterlives.” He explains that people who can be seen as implicated in histories of oppression need to take responsibility for the ways in which they benefit from and perpetuate “a history of aborted justice” (p. 10). Thus, encountering and engaging with such notions “constitutes one of the most urgent political tasks for our time” (p. 10). It is precisely to this task that both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson dedicate their books.

Finding new ways to address painful histories of racism and its role in the present remains a challenge for nations in which systemic racism and institutional discrimination still present sometimes subtle yet insurmountable obstacles for people of color. Going beyond notions of perpetration in terms of oppression in the past and exploring the role of implicated subjects can be useful in a number of ways, as it “allows these different temporal dimensions to come into focus by drawing attention to the simultaneously historical and contemporary production of the scene of racialization and racial violence” (Rothberg, 2019, p. 10). Rothberg (2019) suggests in his text that instead of staying focused on the categories of victims and perpetrators, it is important to emphasize the need for a “discourse of restitution” (p. 61). In addition, Rothberg argues that the problem of descendancy, for example, in terms of histories of slavery, along with what it means to be “implicated in slavery,” “must be given form through acts of representation in order to become perceptible” (p. 68). Here, Rothberg suggests that literary texts and other expressions can pave the way for new ways of seeing such legacies. Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s texts manifest examples of such expressions and provide an opportunity to examine potential avenues and ways of dealing with legacies of extreme racial oppression; legacies that inevitably spill over into the present moment yet also take new shapes and forms. Rothberg’s theory of the implicated subject thus offers a novel and worthwhile approach.

The paper is divided into three sections that deal with aspects of perpetration and implication in historical and contemporary contexts as addressed and presented in Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s texts. The first outlines historical continuities of racism and discusses the ways in which the writers deal with oppressive pasts in Britain and United States respectively. This is part of the “larger reckoning” with continuities that still affect the lives of people of color. The paper argues that both writers, in fact, advocate a return to history in order to properly address implication in the present. The second section moves on to discuss implication in connection to historical trajectories of racism, while the third and final part examines the ideology of color-blindness and post-racialism which have emerged as significant political standpoints. Both writers criticize such attempts to go beyond painful oppressive pasts as yet another way of ignoring the realities of people of color. This brings the discussion of perpetration and implication to the present moment. The third section also offers a brief analysis of possibilities of restitution. Both texts examined here can be seen as working towards new forms of restitution and demanding participation in such efforts among those who can be seen as implicated in histories of racism.

Anglo-American Histories of Racism

What history had I inherited that left me alien in my place of birth?

(Eddo-Lodge, 2018, p. 9)

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race and White Rage offer somewhat different approaches to race and racism in British and American contexts. Bringing them together in dialogue in this paper enables new insights about histories of racism. The two texts in focus have received some scholarly attention previously, for example, by Abbas (2020), who discusses Eddo-Lodge’s book along with two others that deal with the British context of racism. Anderson’s (2017) text has been widely reviewed, for example, by Jennifer Scanlon who finds the book useful for “contextualizing, interrogating, and dismantling injustice” (p. 22). This paper provides an examination of the texts that is entrenched in history, but which also draws on personal experiences as presented by Eddo-Lodge. A significant difference between Eddo-Lodge’s and Andersons texts is the way in which they position themselves in terms of whiteness and to what extent they attempt to find ways of theorizing and conceptualizing it and its role throughout history to the present day. Anderson does not embark on any detailed discussions and analyses of “white rage”, despite the title of her book. As Newlove and Bitz (2018, p. 123) argue in their review of White Rage,

Despite the title of her book, Anderson does not account for a framework that theorizes the emotionalities of Whiteness. Instead she does the work of a historian who catalogues longstanding systems of oppression in the United States while purposely including emotionally wrenching and disturbing stories and leaving the theorizing of emotional performance to those in other disciplines.

White rage as termed by Anderson is thus introduced as a central theme but remains at the periphery of her book which places the history of African Americans center stage. The different approach of Eddo-Lodge is equally important, as it deals more explicitly with whiteness and its effects.

Race and racism have been on the agenda in both United States and the United Kingdom in recent decades, first and foremost through the Black Lives Matter movement which was founded in United States as a response to police brutality against people of color, particularly African Americans. The movement has also become important in the United Kingdom (De Genova, 2018, p. 1767), primarily in relation to migration. Further, Abbas (2020, p. 203) recognizes hard measures against immigrants in the United States as well as Brexit in the United Kingdom as developments that have put race firmly back on the agenda. Arguably, race never left it. Abbas (2020, p. 203) speaks of “institutionalized hostility towards racial minorities in Britain,” which indicates that discrimination is deeply entrenched. Olusoga (2020, n.p.) addresses the debate surrounding race in Britain and its American counterpart, referring to a controversy that emerged in connection to a list of names of people who had become victims of police brutality in the United Kingdom. The counter argument was that the American context cannot be directly compared with the British one in terms of its “depth and ferocity.” Olusoga states that “downplaying British racism with comparisons to the US is a bad habit with a long history,” eventually becoming a “distraction.” The comment indicates that Britain has its own reckoning to do with a troubled past and present, a topic which is central in Eddo-Lodge’s writing.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race addresses issues raised in Eddo-Lodge’s blog post from 2014 with the same title and which is included in the preface of the book. The writer outlines the purpose of her book in the following way: “It has been written to counter the lack of the historical knowledge and the political backdrop you need to anchor your opposition to racism. I hope you use it as a tool” (Eddo-Lodge, 2018, p. xvii). The seven chapters of the book deal with different aspects of racism and white privilege, addressing the issue from historical, political, and social perspectives, and Eddo-Lodge (2018, p. 1) states at the very outset of her book that as a young person, she was familiar with the Civil Rights movement in United States but not as acquainted with black history in Britain. After embarking on a course on the topic, Eddo-Lodge started seeing her surroundings in a new way: “Everywhere I looked, I could see slavery’s legacy” (p. 2). These lines emphasize the continuity of historical legacies and how they inevitably form part of present-day communities.

This history of racism in Britain has been addressed, for example, by Peplow (2019, p. 2), who states that British has a long history of immigration, and that black people were “characterised as a problem” already in the 1970s (p. 3). However, Jackson (2020, p. 31) argues that “[b]y the end of the 1970s, the racism of British public life was coming under sustained criticism and activist pressure.” Further, Jackson (2020, p. 29) talks of “ethnicity management” in his book on blackness in Scotland and argues that such policy has been dominant for centuries: “While the walls came down on extending British citizenship to non-white members of the Commonwealth, the question of what to do with citizens ‘already here’ has preoccupied that adaptive and state-driven national narrative ever since” (p. 30).

This aspect of racialized history is reflected in the comment by Eddo-Lodge (2018) about feeling alien in the place where she was born, cited at the beginning of this section. She writes that at the age of four, “I asked my mum when I would turn white, because all the good people on TV were white, and all the villains were black and brown” (p. 85). She explains that structural racism is not about “persecuted people of colour versus white people intent on evil and malice. Rather, it is about how Britain’s relationship with race infects and distorts equal opportunity” (Eddo-Lodge, 2018, p. 81). The problem with racism thus impacts citizens in ways that are to some extent more abstract and difficult to pinpoint, going beyond overt othering. Here, Meghji (2019, p. 3; italics in the original) study of class and race in Britain is important, arguing that “the existence of a Black middle class is taken to be representative of the non-existence of structural racism.” Thus, notions of color-blindness play into this to a significant degree and will also be examined in this paper. Eddo-Lodge (2018, p. 81; italics in the original) asserts that “we placate ourselves with the fallacy of meritocracy by insisting that we just don’t see race. This makes us feel progressive.” According to Meghji (2019, p. 4), “our understanding of how whiteness structures middle-class identity and culture is patently truncated.” These writings thus paint a picture of racism in Britain as one connected to migration and othering but persisting in contemporary times through unequal opportunity and ideologies of color blindness. The notion of implication is here particularly important, as it too refers to less direct and more invisible forms of benefiting from unequal structures.

In an American context, similar inequality emerges as significant. Rattansi (2007, p. 132) writes that the concept of institutional racism originates from the United States in the 1960s, the time of the Civil Rights struggle. Rattansi explains that the Kerner Commission’s Report in 1968 “argued that the USA was rapidly moving towards two societies, one black and one white, and it pointed to ‘white racism’ as the major underlying racial problem in American society” (p. 133). According to Ashley “Woody” Doane (2020, p. 29), the history of “white supremacy and white resistance in the United States in the twenty-first century” goes back “over four hundred years”:

First was the conquest and ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the indigenous peoples of much of North America, which provided the physical and social space for the United States. [ . . . ] Second was the “triangular trade” and the enslavement of African Americans, which produced great wealth and served as a pillar of the nation’s economic development. Enslavement and its aftermath—Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement—played a core role in the ongoing racialization of the United States and a racial discourse that focused on issues of “black and white.” Finally, the US established a regime of racialized immigration, where immigrants who differed from the Anglo-American core culture were often viewed as suspect until proven white and differentially incorporated into (or in some cases excluded from) American society.

This history of white supremacy and resistance can be connected to Anderson’s (2017) White Rage, the title of which refers to something slightly less overt than outright violence, working “its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly, almost imperceptibly” (p. 3). Further, she explains that the “seemingly isolated episodes” such as the wave of crack cocaine that sent black men into prison, or the difficulty of black children to get proper education despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision, or the racism with which Barack Obama was met during his presidency “once fitted together like pieces in a mosaic, reveal a portrait of a nation: one that is the unspoken truth of our racial divide” (Anderson, 2017, p. 6).

The notion of color-blindness emerges also in the American context, with Doane (2020, pp. 4—5) explaining that “many white Americans refuse to consider how race still shapes the lives of nonwhites despite countless examples and research to the contrary.” According to Doane (pp. 4–5), this refusal “has been linked to the problem of ‘whiteness’—the idea that many whites do not see the privileges provided to them by virtue of association with the white ‘race’ while concomitantly ignoring the oppression that must occur against marginalized groups for whites to secure these benefits.” Both Anderson and Eddo-Lodge thus emphasize white privilege and whiteness at the core of the problem, with Sullivan (2006, pp. 1—2) defining white privilege as something which “operates as nonexistent and actively works to disrupt attempts to reveal its existence.” Clarke and Garner (2010, p. 2), for their part, explain whiteness as an “analytical perspective” and “describable social phenomenon” which “names and critiques hegemonic beliefs and practices that designate white people as ‘normal’ and racially ‘unmarked’.”

In the case of racism, and the institutional power of whiteness as outlined by, for example, DiAngelo (2019), the categories of perpetrators and victims are at the same time both explicit and muddled. To examine implication becomes central, as both whiteness as well as color-blind ideologies can work to perpetuate discrimination and disadvantage. Rothberg’s theory of implication has been applied in different contexts, for example, in a special issue of Journal of Perpetrator Research introduced by Knittel and Forchieri (2020). They argue that “an approach based on implication can illuminate urgent contemporary issues, and intervene productively in long-standing debates on morality, guilt, and responsibility” (p. 5). The articles published in the issue include studies of literary texts, women’s role in the Rwandan genocide, sexual violence, and the Wehrmacht in the Second World War. The historical contexts dealt with in the various articles exemplify events and phenomena where implication in acts of violence have been and continue to be difficult to fully address. Racism and discrimination can be added to the list.

The position as implicated subject stretches far and wide, according to Rothberg’s (2019) definition: “Societal participants who are not active perpetrators of human rights abuses, for instance, may still benefit from such abuses in direct or indirect ways or may have refrained from resisting abuses when they were in a position to do so” (p. 61). This notion exemplifies “gray zones of restitution,” yet Rothberg acknowledges that when restitution has not happened, “an injustice persists across time, even across generations” (p. 61). This is an important notion with regard to race and racism, as it is a historical phenomenon that persists still today, and where true redress has not taken place to a sufficient degree. A tentative gray zone emerges particularly through color-blindness as an ideology that suggests that the only way forward is to go beyond notions of race, in order to create a fully post-racial society. However, both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson criticize such endeavors in their writing and highlight the need for matters concerning race and racism to be openly acknowledged. Their two texts can be argued to manifest this undertaking, to bring focus back to race and to address the trajectories of racism from past to present in British and American contexts.

Legacies of Discrimination

Both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson can be said to focus on actual perpetrators, those complicit in acts of racism and injustice, as well as on those who can be deemed implicated subjects. From a historical perspective, the role of slavery emerges in both texts as central to discourses of racism. Rothberg, too, dedicates significant parts of his book to this topic. He discusses the role of slavery for present-day racial injustice as part of his exploration of perpetration in the past and implication in the present. He argues that “the discourse of victimization tends to re-objectify contemporary subjects and strip them of agency in the present” (Rothberg, 2019, p. 62). Such notions are confirmed by King (2019, p. 389) who writes the following: “The connection to the Diaspora through slavery is problematic because the slavery paradigm keeps Blackness in a constant state of enslavement, which implies that Black people’s rightful place is at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.” Thus, new ways of addressing racism are needed and this is where both Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s books can make such important contributions, as their texts emerge from the need to look further into discourses of race and racism and to enter center stage as persons of color. This is particularly well-established in Eddo-Lodge’s book in which the writer sets out to speak about race on her own terms.

Rothberg (2019) is widely known for his earlier book Multidirectional Memory (2009), which put forward the idea that collective memory is not “a zero-sum game” (p. 21), even though the struggle for recognition of memory and identity (p. 20) may make it seem as such. His recent study on the theory of implication examines implicated subjects as those who “occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or benefit from regimes of domination but do not originate or control such regimes” (p. 1). This position Rothberg defines as being “neither a victim nor a perpetrator, but rather a participant in histories and social formations that generate the positions of victim and perpetrator” (p. 1). The definition connects to whiteness and white privilege in multiple ways and is exemplified through Eddo-Lodge’s (2018, p. 81) assertion that institutional racism is not about “persecuted people of colour versus white people intent on evil and malice,” which would indicate that the lines between victims and perpetrators are not clear-cut.

The problem of equal opportunity is at the center of both Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s writing, and it can be connected to implication as defined by Rothberg (2019), who argues that “debates about racism today have an unavoidable diachronic dimension to them” (p. 9). Rothberg asks what it means “to inherit the legacies of slavery across significant distances of time” (p. 68). Further, he (p. 11) states that investigating the “implicated subject can help us conceptualize and confront both the legacies of violent histories and the sociopolitical dynamics that create suffering and inequality in the present.” Notions of diachronicity are presented in both texts examined, with Anderson (2017, p. 8) writing that after the American civil war, “America was at the crossroads between its slaveholding past and the possibility of a truly inclusive, vibrant democracy.” As Anderson (2017) then outlines, no such vibrant democracy was created that included African Americans as full, emancipated, and enfranchised citizens. In fact, even practices of indentured or forced labor continued despite the end of slavery (p. 19).

Eddo-Lodge (2018), for her part, begins in the era of slavery and explains that slaves existed in Britain too and not only on plantations in the West Indies (p. 5). She touches upon the subject of implication in this era, stating that “many Brits lived comfortably off the toil of enslaved black people without being directly involved in the transaction” (p. 6). Thus, direct perpetration and more indirect implication were already muddled in the early 19th century. In the United States, African Americans were increasingly desperate to leave the living and working conditions in the Southern states and go to the North. Anderson (2017) writes in detail about the “Great Migration” to the north and explains that the arrival of African Americans led to severe violence and lynching (pp. 54–55). The biggest obstacle, however, was the lack of adequate education and resources for schools for black children, a problem that would “bedevil the nation well into the twenty-first century” (Anderson, 2017, p. 70).

Here, Anderson makes a direct connection between the refusal to provide means for black children to properly educate themselves in the early to mid-20th century with inequality and uneven access to opportunities that still persist today. Newlove and Bitz (2018, p. 122) argue the following that connects with these observations:

In a political moment when equality faces heightened attack, the first and most important step is an honest accounting of history often omitted from history books. Only by first recognizing this history can we move forward in our cross-disciplinary work toward social justice.

This is exactly what both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson attempt to do with their texts; bring focus back to history in order to find useful ways forward. Their texts manifest the notion that in order to put the past behind us, we must first place it in front of us. Seeing implication as both historical and as rooted in present-day challenges is thus important.

These notions are exemplified in Eddo-Lodge’s writing through her discussion of the struggle for recognition and equal rights in Britain in the 1960s. She writes about events in Britain in 1963, the year of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream”-speech, involving a bus company that would not hire people of color. A campaign was organized to raise awareness and bring about change. Eventually, due to marching and boycotts, the bus company agreed to stop discriminating against people of color when hiring new employees (Eddo-Lodge, 2018, pp. 28–31). Eddo-Lodge (2018) confesses to not having heard about this campaign until 2013 when she attended an event at which one of the people most vocally involved in the actions spoke: “I felt like I was listening to history” (p. 32). She proceeds to recount other significant events in black British history and riots that followed for example from excessive force used by police officers against people of color. Here, Eddo-Lodge (2018) again mentions the connection with American history:

While the black British story is starved of oxygen, the US struggle against racism is globalised into the story of the struggle against racism that we should look to for inspiration – eclipsing the black British story so much that we convince ourselves that Britain has never had a problem with race. (pp. 54–55)

The diachronicity thus connects not only past and present but implication, too, becomes intertwined in Anglo-American contexts.

This is confirmed by Doharty (2019, p. 112), who writes that research has shown that black history is not taught to a significant degree in British schools:

Schools that rarely do so reduced the topic to token American figures such as Martin Luther King and the rationale for this was because 80% of teachers across both sectors described themselves as having limited or no knowledge of Black British History.

Thus, the importance of knowing history is manifested in Eddo-Lodge’s book, and black history in particular, is emphasized: “I recall these histories not to obsessively comb over the past, but simply to know it. Perhaps I am betraying my ignorance, but until I went actively digging for black British histories, I didn’t know them” (201, p. 54). Thus, Eddo-Lodge’s (2018) efforts to learn about history has a more personal and private dimension, as she includes discussions with people who tell her of their own experiences with race and racism as exemplified through the story of Jessica, a woman with a white mother and a black father (pp. 103–107). Eddo-Lodge (2018, p. 107) writes that the relationship between Jessica and her mother is “deeply loving and deeply painful,” yet she expresses some understanding as to why “interracial couples might not want to burden themselves with the depressing weight of racial history when planning their lives together” (p. 108). The burden of history becomes evident in these lines, yet the notion of interracialism is also relevant, as a desire to get away from the weight of history can be connected to the ideology of color-blindness.

Anderson’s take on interracial or biracial issues is partly presented through the presidency of Obama, of whom Jolivette (2012, p. 20) says that “like the nation itself, as a biracial subject” he must try to cater to all sides: “As the son of an immigrant (another aspect often overlooked in the black–white binary debate), Obama could speak to other immigrants, he could speak to white Americans, black Americans, mixed race Americans” (Jolivette, 2012, p. 14). However, as Anderson emphasizes, this was no easy task nor did all different groups accept Obama. Backlash against him has seen him defined as “this Muslim, black nationalist, socialist, foreign, Arab, Kenyan, un-American immigrant monstrosity” (Anderson, 2017, p. 156). Further, Obama has faced severe criticism in terms of his efforts for people of color: “Since taking office many have argued that President Obama has not done ‘enough’ for people of color” (Jolivette, 2012, p. 12). “The depressing weight of racial history” can thus not be done away with once and for all, nor can it be overlooked or diminished, least of all among those who occupy such in-between spaces. Reluctance to deal with racial and racialized histories may seemingly protect the individual and create an illusion of historical distance, of becoming free from the weight of the past if it is not openly acknowledged. Such reluctance may also be connected to implication.

“History is not an objective other, a dispassionate, neutral reality,” writes Morgan (2018, p. 156) in his article on the conflict over Confederacy-era statues and memorials that erupted in American states in 2017. He argues that the conflict “reveals the instability of historical narratives and the important role that objects perform in attempting to anchor them” (p. 156). The contestation over racial histories and legacies of injustice as presented in Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s texts and briefly outlined here speak to the same issue of narratives being inherently unstable and the diachronicity of racism in desperate need of redress and open acknowledgement. Revisiting history and narratives of the past in the way they both have done, speaking of things of which they themselves were ignorant or “the unspoken truth of our racial divide” (Anderson, 2017, p. 6), is a necessary act in order to find ways of addressing implication and making space for more stories of injustice in the present. Appleby (2005, p. 6) neatly summaries these endeavors:

History plays an essential role as a unifier in the life of a nation, a role with unavoidable political overtones. It also shapes how people view the world and the differences they encounter when they leave their own boundaried lives.

It is particularly this leaving of one’s boundaried life that both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson advocate, and ultimately it can be read into Rothberg’s call for more nuanced readings and interpretations of implication and oppressive histories. Further, Appleby (2005, p. 3) points out the importance of reinterpreting pasts:

Historical knowledge comes not from remembering the past, but from taking questions to it. If no one inquires about a past event or development, it remains obscure. Large hunks of past experience go unresearched and hence unknown and will continue so until someone thinks to ask about them. These are unpalatable truths for those who want certitude about our knowledge of the past.

The connection to race and racism in terms of oppressive pasts can be made, and both writers examined here address the problem of “unpalatability” particularly with regard to color-blindness or the creation of so-called postracial society. This is where the paper turns next.

Writing against Color-Blindness and Postracialism

While there is no shortage of scholarly research into the history of racism and its legacies, particularly in an American context since the election of Barack Obama, which can be seen as something of a watershed in American history of race and racism, there is also no shortage of criticism of color-blind or post-racial ideologies. Gaither et al. (2019, p. 54) define the concept of color-blindness in the following way: “Colorblindness is one particular racial ideology centered on the belief that acknowledgment of race and categorization based on race should be avoided.” A central text discussing the meanings and uses of the concept of the postracial has been offered by Goldberg (2015) through his book Are We All Postracial Yet?. Goldberg (2015, p. 60) argues that postracial ideology “is the aspirational, if not yet fully realized, mode in terms of which contemporary racisms are projected.” Further, he explains that postracialism is also “the illusion that the dream of the nonracial has already been realized” (Goldberg, 2015, p. 180). Calling it an ideology brings attention to its advocating role and to the detrimental effect such approaches have on people of color in particular. As Eddo-Lodge and Anderson outline and problematize in their books, reality remains complex and racial injustice has not disappeared. Furthering color-blindness works to benefit those already profiting from racial structures and injustices. Color-blindness is here connected to the historical continuities of racism as a more contemporary manifestation of complex implication.

Hence, this section sets out to explore the Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s critique of color-blindness and post-racialism as approaches that fail to provide restitution and work in the favor of those already in possession of racial, social, and economic power. The concept of color-blindness is here discussed as an example of a gray zone of restitution as defined by Rothberg and as examined by Eddo-Lodge and Anderson. To some extent, White Rage is in its entirety a vocal critique of color-blind objectives introduced and set in motion in order to keep people of color in their place (Anderson, 2017, pp. 3, 61, 66, 96). Some of the most powerful writing in Anderson’s (2017) book is related to the question of education and how the Brown v. Board of Education decision by courts to desegregate schools did not work out as it should have due to fierce resistance against mixed race schools. Some communities came up with ways to circumvent the decision and allowed only a few black pupils to attend white schools (p. 96). Minow (2010, p. 6) writes that still today, “students’ residential segregation and school assignments often produce schools and classrooms divided along lines of race, ethnicity, and socio-economic class.”

The legacy of Brown v. Board is thus contested (Bell, 2004, p. 131), with López and Burciaga (2014, p. 798) asking whether we need to go beyond the decision and “pose new and different questions about the larger role of race and racism in this country” (italics in the original). This need is reflected in Anderson’s (2017) book through the comment at the very end: “It is time to rethink America” (p. 176). The discussion of Brown v. Board by Anderson and various scholars thus indicates that while we must acknowledge the trajectories of racism throughout history, we may also need to look further to find new ways of dealing with racism in the present.

As Korgen and Brunsma (2012, p. 192) state, the ideology of colorblindness actually began as early as in the 1970s and Anderson (1970) too confirms this. She writes that in the post-civil rights era, racism gained a new definition, being reduced to “sheet-wearing goons,” allowing “a cloud of racial innocence to cover many whites” (p. 100). There was resentment against the demands of African Americans as white citizens felt progress was happening too fast and at their expense (pp. 102–103). Anderson returns to the question of education and gives an example that highlights the problems of implication. She recounts the Bakke decision in 1978, which concerned a white male who sued a university that had turned down his application despite his having scored higher points than some students of color who were admitted. The judges who worked on the case were generally of the opinion that the white male was not responsible for historical injustice, nor did they approve of “admissions policies designed to atone for past discrimination” (Anderson, 2017, p. 117). Such a standpoint suggests that implication in oppressive histories may be challenging to address in concrete ways.

Eddo-Lodge (2018) addresses the same issue from a more contemporary perspective, arguing that there is an urgent need for a “collective redefinition of what it means to be racist, how racism manifests, and what we must do to end it” (pp. 65–66). Furthermore, Eddo-Lodge (2018, p. 78) addresses the issue of positive discrimination, also called affirmative action, and writes that such efforts “are often vehemently opposed.” This is confirmed in research as well, with Omi and Winant (2012, p. 309), among others, stating the following:

As an ideological frame, colorblindness denies that race should inform perceptions, shape attitudes, or influence individual or collective action. Indeed from a colorblind standpoint any hints of race consciousness are tainted by racism; hence, the most effective anti-racist gesture, policy, or practice is simply to ignore race.

From this perspective, positive discrimination becomes racist, too. The concept of postracial society ties in with these exact conundrums, as outlined by Paul (2019, p. 4):

I use the postracial primarily as a shorthand for the postracial fantasy—a discourse that erases the actuality of racialised stratification, denies the effects of racist discrimination and maintains a generalised equality of opportunity characterises social life. The supposed irrelevance of race to life chances and opportunities renders redundant the political and economic redistributive agenda challenging racisms.

It is exactly against such notions that both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson write, with Anderson even putting a price tag on the losses of African Americans due to discrimination throughout history; “twenty-four trillion dollars in multigenerational devastation” (p. 99). Such an unimaginably high number indicates that some form of actual redress and reparation is necessary, beyond just acknowledging the deprivation institutional racism has caused. This is where Rothberg’s theory of restitution can be useful. He suggests that instead of focusing solely on the loss people have experienced, people who have been systematically discriminated against throughout history, it would be more worthwhile to focus on “the ‘gain’ that beneficiaries profit from by virtue of history” (Rothberg, 2019, p. 83). Both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson devote their books to this task, to outlining the benefits implicated subjects have received in the course of history and centuries of racism, one of such benefits being the ideology of color-blindness.

Seeing color-blindness and attached notions of postracial societies in the making as a gray zone of restitution implies muddledness in terms of who is implicated and in what ways. Rothberg (2019, pp. 40–41) draws on Primo Levi and his writings on the Holocaust in order to outline the concept of the gray zone, explaining that it “troubles not only conventional morality but also legal judgment and historical understanding.” An American example given by Rothberg (2019) in this context concerns prisons that hold high numbers of people of color (pp. 39–40), as they too can be seen as sites and locations with particular structures of power and domination. Thus, in that sense, seeing color-blindness as a gray zone is plausible, although it is a much more abstract zone of power and domination than a prison. Connecting the need for restitution to this notion enables examining color-blindness as discussed and criticized by Eddo-Lodge and Anderson as an object of implication itself.

Eddo-Lodge (2019, pp. 80–81) recounts how she did not believe in positive discrimination herself when she was younger, feeling that it was unnecessary and that she wanted to compete on the same level as white people her age. She later changed her mind when winning a media internship through a diversity program and realizing that not many people of color worked in that professional setting. She calls color-blindness “a childish, stunted analysis of racism” (p. 82), and argues that continuously repeating to ourselves “that we are all equal is a misdirected yet well-intentioned lie” (p. 83). This highlights color-blindness as a gray zone of restitution and as an object of implication, created and advocated by implicated subjects and performing implication on its own.

The present moment has seen its own changes and transformations with regard to race discourse and debate, and both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson bring the discussion of racism to the present moment. Both look toward the future. In connection to this, Harris (2019, p. xiv) argues the following with regard to Obama’s presidency and the hope for a more equal futures: “[O]ne change that never manifested was the post-race moment. [ . . . ] It became clear that the deep cleaning required to facilitate our healing would not be forthcoming in the eight years or afterwards.” This has proven to be true in many respects, yet both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson end their books on a more hopeful note. Anderson (2017, p. 6) states in the very opening of White Rage that as the “judicial system in state after state turned free those who had decided neighborhood’s ‘safety’ meant killing first and asking questions later, a very real warning was sent that black lives don’t matter.” However, at the end of her book, she argues that it “is time to move into the future” (p. 175). She connects this with a new kind of solidarity emerging in recent years to counteract discourses of prejudice and exclusion and says that Americans have been “shaken out of their complacency that democracy will just run on its very own” (p. 174). This, according to Anderson, could provide building blocks for a more sustainable future for the nation’s citizens.

Such hopefulness goes beyond being mere utopian thinking: “Full voting rights for American citizens, funding and additional resources for quality schools, and policing and court systems in which racial bias is not sanctioned by law—all these are well within our grasp” (Anderson, 2017, p. 177). Emphasizing the need for solidarity in this way, and the possibilities joint efforts can bring, is recognized by Fekete (2020, p. 90) in her article on fighting racism in the United Kingdom: “What could be a greater challenge to state neglect of impoverished communities than ordinary people forming solidarity movements that cut across divides of race and class.” Further, she argues that “[a]nti-racism as a practice is not about finger-pointing or virtue-signalling; it is about building a momentum in society which remakes racial justice” (p. 94). It is exactly this momentum Anderson refers to at the end of her book, recognizing efforts already taking place within the United States for a more equal future and urging people to continue coming together and joining their efforts in order for everyone to have a sustainable future. These ideas of assuming common responsibility for racial relations go beyond notions of implication, beyond gray zones, and may open up space for true equality.

Eddo-Lodge’s book ends with a section titled “Aftermath” that deals with the historical and political moment into which her book emerged. Her perspective is more global, as she outlines developments that saw “public opinion [ . . . ] veering towards hostility” (p. 227). Eddo-Lodge confirms that her book was meant to “change the national conversation about race” and that when it eventually was published, “people were ready for it” (p. 231). Eddo-Lodge explains how black culture and history were slowly getting more recognition in the United Kingdom, being less modelled on “the American narrative as a tool to find ourselves” (p. 235). The message in both Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s text seems to be that black history is not only for people of color but for all people, and that it needs to be acknowledged as History alongside more dominant versions. This connects to Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory and the need for recognition of all histories and collective memories. Work for greater equality also needs to be seen not just along racial lines as outlined by Paul (2019), but as advocacy that requires space and recognition on multiple fronts. Eddo-Lodge is hopeful at the end of her book, writing that she sees “change” and “talent” (p. 237), indicating that the efforts to change discourses on racism and how it manifests in society are a movement in themselves bringing people together (p. 238).

The connection with history is thus explicit, and both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson exemplify through their texts how the past remains a part of the present; a present which moves in its very own directions, yet which cannot be seen in separation from history. History directly impacts the present, and not in the form of some objective version of history (Morgan, 2018), but through interpretations and narratives that work to serve some groups at the expense of others, representing a society in which equality is possible only if certain groups stay in their designated place. Further, King (2019, p. 389) makes an important point about how history can be used for various purposes: “Yet, being historically conscious is more than knowledge acquisition. Historical consciousness encompasses epistemological, ontological, and axiological concerns that recognize that history is not solely about the past but how we view the present.” Both Eddo-Lodge and Anderson set out to inform and educate their reader on aspects of black history and history of racism that form an “unspoken truth” as argued by Anderson. Their texts form a continuity from past to present, linking historical developments with contemporary challenges.

Conclusion

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race and White Rage offer versions of official histories from often ignored perspectives, emphasizing the need for more voices that participate not only in the documentation of the past but in the interpretation of the past in the present moment. Just as history cannot be made away with, ignoring oppressive histories through declarations of post-racial and color-blind ideologies will not work to eradicate racism. This is one of the most important messages of both texts. Implication comes to mean not only participation in neglect and discrimination, but takes on subtler forms such as a reluctance to acknowledge the burden of history. Reading the two texts from a perspective of Michael Rothberg’s The Implicated Subject and the theory of implication and restitution he brings forth enable placing race and racism center stage and examining them as structures inherently part of present-day American and British societies, structures that loom so large they risk becoming invisible to some. Reading Eddo-Lodge’s and Anderson’s texts through a lens of implication puts Rothberg’s theory into practice, contributing to the growing scholarship on his writing.

Both authors address the need for all citizens to take responsibility for how various groups are treated, indicating that it impossible to escape implication in discrimination past and present. Yet, this implication can be seen in positive terms, as an acknowledgment of a painful past and a commitment to a more equal future. This is the most significant finding: acknowledging implication can be the force that carries us into a more equal future. Another central observation in this paper is that restitution may not come in the form of formal apologies for every structural and institutional oversight and wrong, nor are the trillions of dollars mentioned by Anderson likely to ever be repaid. Going back is no option, the past cannot be altered, and repairing damages done to generations of people of color in Britain and in the United States will not be fully possible. Anderson’s list of measures that need to take place in order to ensure a more equal future, such as full voting rights and a justice system free of bias, emerge as concrete forms of reparation and restitution. Acknowledging the need for such measures indicates recognition of implication, both personal and institutional. Confronting the legacies of violent histories as called for by Rothberg may thus need to take concrete form. To that extent, the contributions of both Anderson and Eddo-Lodge are urgent in terms of societal change that needs to happen and in terms of knowing and understanding local racial(ized) histories.

Both authors advocate a future that remains open for different forms of solidarity that can be expressed across racial lines. The only way to offer redress is to openly address trajectories of racism that continue to effect lives, and to examine implication past and present from as many perspectives as possible. A more just future is suggested as the only possible restitution, a future the foundation of which lies in the recognition of previously ignored histories. While the two texts deal with British and American contexts, the need for recognition and restitution can be seen in more global terms as well, for example, in relation to various postcolonial settings. More research is required into different historical and political locations, both locally and globally, that can shed light on structures of racism and address the need for recognition and restitution in other contexts. Eddo-Lodge and Anderson pave the way with their texts as analyzed in this article and indicate that while the past may never be fully overcome, or implication in the present adequately dealt with, the effort to do so and the attempt to provide recognition is a significant step forward.