When the Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States in May 2020 my husband’s Seattle-based company reached out to its employees and offered to pay for the Ijeoma Oluo’s book and I said, yes, please.

I read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race a couple of years back and wanted to continue the conversation. I was also interested in the US perspective, having lived there for three years until early this year.

I have only got to page 50 at the moment, so a long way to go but what made me feel hopeful in my own slight endeavours to make myself aware of systemic/structural racism came on page 14 where Oluo defines basic rules to determine if something is about race and her number one is: 

            It is about race if a person of color thinks it is about race.

This has been my practice for a few years now as I fully realised something we all inherently know – that we can never claim to have the same experience as somebody else. Not even if we were in the exact same situation. So, as a white person, I cannot, in my wildest dreams, understand what it is like to be a person of colour. 

I am afraid to talk about race, especially with other white people. I am afraid I will find out that they are racist. I am afraid that I will have to tell them so and I am afraid that I will be too scared to.

I cannot recollect many conversations about race with people of colour, I remember many conversations about cultures, traditions and families. I have been called racist and I know there must be some truth in it; I have prejudice and I do use stereotypes. 

This article has turned out to be about me a lot. It is not my place and it is certainly beyond my capacity to comment on what the book has to say as I am reading it to listen and receive.