Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Chapter 5 focuses on the shortcomings of traditional feminism, namely its exclusion of women of color. Eddo-Lodge uses the entertainment industry to explain this problem. In 2012, commentators hailed Girls, a television show about young white women in New York City, as “the most feminist show in decades” (144). Eddo-Lodge penned a blog questioning how feminists could recognize the problem of an all-male panel or workplace but fail to recognize the problem of an all-white television show. Lily Allen’s music video for “Hard Out There” also fueled debates about race, not for excluding women of color but for representing them in a negative way. All the women of color in the video are scantily clad backup dancers who serve as foils for Allen, a successful white woman singing about glass ceilings and objectification. Eddo-Lodge’s use of popular culture helps engage readers and introduce them to challenging topics.

In 2013, Eddo-Lodge participated in a panel on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, where she shared her concerns about white-centric feminist perspectives to a room full of white people. She explained why feminism needed to consider race alongside gender. Another panelist observed that anti-racist perspectives were fueling online harassment and inadvertently implicated Eddo-Lodge in this kind of behavior.