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Keon West: ‘You can’t tell that racism is or isn’t happening because you know a Black person who earns a lot of money’
The author and academic on mistaking feelings for facts, the importance of education and why Kemi Badenoch will do nothing to help ethnic minoritiesRead an extract from The Science of Racism by Keon WestKeon West is professor of social psychology at the University of London. He was born in Trinidad, grew up in Jamaica, and studied in the US and France before coming to the UK as a Rhodes scholar in 2006 to do a doctorate at Oxford University.Why do you think we need a book about the science of racism? What I find frustrating, shocking and worrying is that as a society, when we talk about racism we express feelings about it and emotions and opinions, but our conversations aren’t based on facts – or science. Not only that, we make the mistake of misinterpreting our feelings as if they were facts. This leads nowhere: one person will say: “Well, I don’t see any racism, so racism is over.” And another person will say: “Well, someone didn’t hire me for a job, so racism is alive and well.” ...
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