[5] In The Times Literary Supplement, Bernardine Evaristo described the book's title as "gloriously provocative", noting that it was "marketing gold" in the climate surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement.

However, she critiques Eddo-Lodge for not engaging in enough "rigorous research, particularly into the past" and for the fact that she "completely overlooks" the work of Black British feminist writers like Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe.

"[6] Arifa Akbar reviewed the work for the Financial Times, noting that Eddo-Lodge "builds on a critical tradition drawn from black American writers" like W. E. B.

Akbar notes that "Not everyone will find the answer to racial inequality in Eddo-Lodge's reliance on White consciousness-raising, but it is an important shift that undermines the idea that racism is the BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) community's burden to carry.

"[7] Writing for The Guardian, Colin Grant places the book within a wider tradition of "angry warnings to an ignorant white readership", the majority of which have been produced by African-American rather than Black British writers.