41 Quotes by Reni Eddo-Lodge


  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    Colour blindness is often used to silence people of colour attempting to articulate the racism we face. When people of colour point this out, they're accused of being racist against white people, and the accountability avoidance continues. Colour blindness does not accept the legitimacy of structural racism or a history of white racial dominance.

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  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    Racism does not go both ways. There are unique forms of discrimination that are backed up by entitlement, assertion and, most importantly, supported by a structural power strong enough to scare you into complying with the demands of the status quo. We have to recognise this.

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  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    Whiteness in the press had positioned itself for too long as the self-appointed, self-referential arbiter of racial problems, in which it pondered why these black and brown communities were so prone to violence and poverty, without a shred of self-awareness.

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  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience. You can see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals. It’s like they can no longer hear us.

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  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    It's truly a lifetime of self-censorship that people of colour have to live. The options are: speak your truth and face the reprisals, or bite your tongue and get ahead in life.

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  • Author Reni Eddo-Lodge
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    It feels like a cliché to say, but if anyone feeling resentful about their immigrant neighbours took the time to talk to them and find out a bit about their lives, they would almost certainly find that these people do not have everything handed to them on a plate, but instead are living in poor, cramped conditions, likely having left even worse conditions from wherever they've moved from.

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