Emma Dabiri: ‘What White People Can Do Next’ with Blindboy Boatclub

A work of history, sociology, philosophy and social commentary, Don’t Touch My Hair explored in fascinating detail an aspect of anti-Black discrimination so commonplace as to be almost invisibilised. Emma Dabiri’s second book, What White People Can Do Next, is a challenge to all of us taking the first tentative steps of standing up against a society that still struggles to move past narratives of Irish national exceptionalism. Though our history is one of colonial oppression, the Irish state – from immigration policy, to direct provision, to the housing crisis – seems all too ready to step into those colonialist shoes. Dabiri’s book calls for more than gestures, thoughts and prayers, demanding education and substantial, sustainable action. This conversation with one of Ireland’s sharpest, wittiest and most rigorous writers, will be essential viewing.

Emma will be joined in conversation by Blindboy Boatclub.

Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic, activist, broadcaster and teaching fellow in the Africa department at SOAS and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths.  Her 2019 debut Don’t Touch My Hair was an Irish Times Bestseller and published to critical and commercial acclaim. The book also inspired a national conversation about race and hair and has led to changing regulations in schools and in the British army. A regular broadcaster on the BBC, Emma presented ‘Back in Time Brixton’ (BBC2), ‘Britain’s Lost Masterpieces’ (BBC4), as well as the sociological experiment ‘Is Love Racist?’ (Ch4). Most recently, she hosted Radio 4’s critically-acclaimed documentary ‘Journeys into Afro- futurism’.

This is a pre-recorded event. It will not have a Q&A.

Access options: This event will have closed captions.