Emmanuel Acho: 'White people don't understand the jurisdiction of black things'

@by_drew

Wed 2 Dec 2020 05.00 EST

Last modified on Fri 4 Dec 2020 05.49 EST

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, debuts in the UK this week after a bestselling run in the United States. And it builds on his viral YouTube series of the same name, which is less about what’s being talked about than who’s doing the talking: the skier Lindsey Vonn, the actor Matthew McConaughey, a police department in California. The book, on the other hand, not only adds the missing context of 400 years’ worth of enslavement, subjugation and disenfranchisement as context, but sums it all up with a breezy succinctness that is careful not to lay any blame at the feet of its intended audience. Where Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 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. 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 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 I was distraught. I said, ‘We have to figure out how to fix this problem’. 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.’
“As soon as they said that, I got it. 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.”
Uncomfortable draws those jurisdiction lines and tiptoes them just as easily. It’s equal parts rulebook and playbook. Each chapter closes with racism counteroffensives that run the gamut from subscribing to NPR’s Code Switch podcast to advocating for Second Look legislation. 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. “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. “I realized then that there are so many of those same issues across the pond. 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. The same issues are being faced all over the world.”
What’s more, the world might not be reckoning with them at all if it hadn’t been for an uncomfortable conversation that started in a football locker room and ended with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem to bring awareness to these issues at the expense of his professional career. Just this past August, Acho interviewed Roger Goodell for his YouTube series. And while the NFL commissioner stopped short of apologizing to Kaepernick, Goodell did concede that he wished he had listened to him sooner. “It’s kinda like when I tell my friends about the death, poverty and malnourishment in Nigeria, and they’re like, ‘OK, I get it,’” says Acho, who travels to the country regularly on medical missions. “But then when I bring them over with me, now they really get it.”
“I feel like Goodell is getting it now,” Acho adds. “Now he knows the problem exists and can work to fix it.
Doubtless there will be parts of Uncomfortable that will more than live up to the title for some. Ideally, President Trump reconsiders his meaning for the phrase “locker room talk.” (I have a dream…) Either way, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have another white allyship guidebook in circulation, one that can be read in a sitting to boot. And a manual written by Emmanuel? Well, who could deny the ity in that?
- Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man by Emmanuel Acho is available to buy now.

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