{"id":61621,"date":"2021-09-27T18:52:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T18:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61621"},"modified":"2021-09-27T19:09:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T19:09:36","slug":"emma-dabiri-when-race-begins-and-ends-with-social-media-we-have-quite-reductive-distorted-interpretations-of-what-were-dealing-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61621","title":{"rendered":"Emma Dabiri: \u2018When race begins and ends with social media, we have quite reductive, distorted interpretations of what we\u2019re dealing with\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Dabiri: \u2018When race begins and ends with social media, we have quite reductive, distorted interpretations of what we\u2019re dealing with\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Irish Independent<\/a>
\n2021-07-18<\/p>\n

Liadan Hynes<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nWriter Emma Dabiri<\/a>, photographed by Steve Ryan<\/small><\/p>\n

Irish-Nigerian writer and academic Emma Dabiri<\/a> talks about growing up in Ireland as an outsider, how this shaped her activism and career, and why leisure is liberation<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018I had already been angry, had spent most of my life angry,\u201d Emma Dabiri<\/a> writes in her latest book, What White People Can Do Next<\/em><\/a>. She\u2019s talking about her reaction to the murder of George Floyd<\/a> in America<\/a> last May at the hands of a police officer, and the subsequent protests that broke out around the world.<\/p>\n

Now, though, she no longer gets angry. Last summer\u2019s events were, Emma reflects, in terms of racism, \u201cjust business as usual\u201d.<\/p>\n

She recalls wryly now how people contacted her in the wake of Floyd\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, for me, it\u2019s completely horrific, but why was it that<\/em> murder that sparked the world? State-sanctioned killing has been happening regularly for centuries; that one captured the public\u2019s imagination,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had people messaging me saying \u2018this time must be unbearably distressing for you\u2019, and I\u2019m like, well, why is it wildly more distressing than any of the millions of other times this has happened? Because you happened to hear of it this time? Because this time it happened to move you? Why do you think this is the first time I\u2019m engaging with something like this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Broadcaster, author and academic Emma, whose father was Nigerian and whose mother is Irish, was born in Dublin<\/a> but moved to Atlanta, Georgia<\/a>, where she lived before returning to Ireland<\/a> with her mum when she was four. She grew up here in the 1980s and early 1990s, before moving to London<\/a> when she was 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cI experienced racism from quite a young age. My response to those experiences was to read, and try and make sense of what I was experiencing through reading,\u201d explains Emma, who left Ireland to do a degree in African studies and post-colonial theory at SOAS University of London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She understood racism at an early age: \u201cThese weren\u2019t things that I decided, or discovered recently, I have been living and working with and through this stuff for many, many years.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irish-Nigerian writer and academic Emma Dabiri talks about growing up in Ireland as an outsider, how this shaped her activism and career, and why leisure is liberation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,28,8,23674,10],"tags":[13842,246,31974,31973,31975],"class_list":["post-61621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-europe","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-uk","tag-emma-dabiri","tag-ireland","tag-irish-independent","tag-liadan-hynes","tag-the-irish-independent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61628,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621\/revisions\/61628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}