![]() The same issues are being faced all over the world.” The difference is America has such a visceral reaction because of the history of the issues that isn’t as widely known in the UK. “I realized then that there are so many of those same issues across the pond. “During the uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, I vividly remember hearing the Black Lives Matter chant in the sweetest British accents,” says Acho, adding that a not-insignificant chunk of his questions come from UK followers. Well-meaning white allies will find the book a handy reference, but that’s not to say non-American members of the black African diaspora can’t get something out of it, too. Each chapter closes with racism counteroffensives that run the gamut from subscribing to NPR’s Code Switch podcast to advocating for Second Look legislation. Uncomfortable draws those jurisdiction lines and tiptoes them just as easily. ![]() ![]() White people, even my dearest white brothers and sisters who I know love me to death, they don’t understand the jurisdiction, or lack thereof, of black culture and black things.” I asked them, ‘What is it about black people that makes white people so scared?’ They asked me, ‘How can we get exposed to more black people?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, you could go to a black church.’ One of them responded, ‘We thought that was y’alls thing.’ I said, ‘We have to figure out how to fix this problem’. “I was sitting down with some dear white friends of mine, two couples, white people that I would consider brothers and sisters of mine,” he says. And it’s further telling that he might never have taken the conversations public if the police killing of George Floyd hadn’t triggered a global reckoning on race. I say that to point out just how intuitively Acho – who, in 2013, famously shared a Philadelphia Eagles locker room with a black quarterback who went to prison for dog fighting, and a white receiver who was caught on tape dropping the N-word – understands how little his intended audience is interested in being scolded or otherwise made to feel bad or, worse: responsible. ![]() The opponent is hatred, systemic injustice.” What we haven’t yet realized is our opponent is oppression. But because you have a common goal of beating the opponent, you don’t care about everyone’s differences. “You have people of different races, different religions. “The locker room is what our society needs to look like,” says Acho. In time, Acho found inside those locker room walls the kind of open and meaningful discussions about race and culture that most on the outside would rather not have. At his predominately white private suburban high school, he was “Manny.” To a mostly black gridiron cohort at the University of Texas, where he’d distinguish himself at linebacker on a college football powerhouse, he became “Acho” to differentiate him from his older brother, who had the privilege of being called by his first name, Sam – and who, like him, would go on to have a career in the NFL. Before he was a standout football player turned TV commentator, he was the Nigerian kid with the biblical name that had all the kids fumbling for something else to call him. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity-but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.What’s in a name? Power, says Emmanuel Acho. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.” In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask-yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. “But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.” “You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |