Summary
For many white people their race is not part of their identity. Race, racial inequality and racism are things that people of colour are expected to talk about and organise around. Not anymore.
Anti-racist activists and academics are now urging white people to recognise that they are just as racialised as minorities. The way to successfully tackle structural racism, they say, is to get white people to start taking responsibility for the racially unjust status quo.
Bristol-based journalist Neil Maggs, who is white, takes a deep dive into the canon of books, Instagram challenges and workshops that seek to educate people like him on their white privilege and internalised white supremacy. He gets advice from anti-racism trainer Robin DiAngelo, learns about the growing field of whiteness studies in the UK, and visits the white working class estate of Hartcliffe to see how these ideas play out there.
He also talks to Eric Kaufmann about the inevitable decline of white majorities by the end of the century and how to prevent white people falling for far-right conspiracy theories about being wiped out.
Presenter: Neil Maggs Producer: Lucy Proctor
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hi, welcome to Analysis, the podcast that looks at some of the ideas behind the news. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Lucy Proctor, the producer of this program. In it, Bristol |
| 0:45.7 | journalist Neil Mags is going to examine the concept of whiteness. What do people |
| 0:50.8 | mean when they blame whiteness for racial inequality? |
| 0:54.0 | And as a white man, should he be trying to be a bit less white? |
| 1:00.0 | Recently, I've noticed a shift in the way people are talking about race. |
| 1:04.0 | I've never seen so many white people in one place. |
| 1:08.0 | I'm starting to hear a lot of references to white people. |
| 1:11.0 | Apparently the latest group who feels bullying are white people. Apparently the latest group who feels bullying are white people. |
| 1:15.7 | We have become aware of our whiteness. |
| 1:18.5 | At its most extreme, this plays out in the Christchurch bombings, the rhetoric of Trump's rallies, and the rise of the |
| 1:26.6 | far right in the UK. |
| 1:29.8 | But at the other end of the political spectrum, anti-racism activists and academics in the US, and increasingly |
| 1:35.8 | here in the UK, are asking for a conversation on whiteness. |
| 1:40.7 | I'm Neil Mags, a journalist with a background in community development from Bristol. |
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