Book 733: So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo

Like everyone else, but mostly the white people, in America should be doing, I’ve taken some time over the past few months to further educate myself on systemic racism and oppression in the United States. From discussions at work to dozens of articles and books, it has been 100% worth it to self-reflect and be reminded of things I knew and be introduced to things I didn’t.

I was first introduced to Oluo when I read, “The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black”, a powerful and frank wide ranging interview and reflection on race, privilege, and white supremacy in America. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it.

I was going to wait for a copy of this from my local library, because that’s just what I do unless I can buy used, but the wait time was months long—and they had dozens of copies! So, I put my money where my mouth was and bought it to read it sooner and I’m glad I did. (This is the third book that’s mentioned Whitman’s line, “You do, as Walt Whitman said, contain multitudes.” (217), since I read We Contain Multitudes which made me smile.)

Oluo doesn’t pull her punches in this one, and she shouldn’t. These things need to be said and they need to be read. And the breadth of this work is incredible. Every one of the seventeen chapters could be a book unto itself and I would absolutely read them if Oluo wrote them. Her writing is not only educational, it’s approachable and her ability to bring in a moment of levity right when you feel the tension can’t get any stronger was astounding. She did this without detracting from what she was writing about and never once derailed her thesis.

As a white person raised in the south there were things in this book that I learned way later than I should have in life. I did grow up in a family that was more accepting and open than many others in NC, but reading this book really made me want to print out Chapter 16: “I just got called racist, what do I do now?” and select quotes and mail them to every member of my family and many of my friends/friends’ families. The shit we absorbed growing up about race and racism (consciously and unconsciously) and then have to unlearn and constantly fight against is ridiculous. I know for a fact I have had this thought/made this comparison at some point in my life:

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same. (13)

I am so glad I know better and now need to do better on educating those who still use these types of comparisons, because it’s not the same and it never has been.

Then there is the cracker argument. The number of times I’ve heard that, I just can’t anymore. I want to get this passage on a t-shirt and just wear it anytime I fly back to NC:

Cracker does not invoke the mass lynchings of white people, ‘blacks only’ lunch counters, snarling police dogs aimed at white bodies—because that simply did not happen in our history. Cracker has not been a tool of racial oppression against white people, because nobody is or has been racially oppressing white people. . . (138)

This should be common sense, but white people cling to that term without even seriously thinking about it. What. The. Actual. F*ck. And speaking of common sense, I will say that my family did do one thing right though, we learned this at a young age:

Touching anybody anywhere without their permission or a damn good reason is just not okay. (158)

It is so foreign to me why anyone would touch anyone else or anything anyone else owns or is wearing or anything like that without permission. It’s not “just not okay” it’s creepy AF. Seriously, I’m not even comfortable feeling a fabric on a scarf or jacket someone’s taken off without asking permission, let alone something as intimate as someone’s hair!

Oluo’s chapters on privilege and intersectionality were also powerful. I have joked about it in papers I’ve written for school and I’m sure on this blog, but as a cis-gendered white middle-class English-speaking man, my only redeeming quality is that I’m gay. Knowing how privileged I am and being able to check that and just shut up and listen took a long time to learn.

It is fine to be angry, there is a lot about racism to be angry about. And it is fine to express that anger. But it is never okay to battle racism with sexism, transphobia, ableism, or other oppressive language and actions. Don’t stoop to that level, and don’t allow others to. We must be willing to fight oppression in all of its forms. (47)

I think about every black and brown person, every queer person, every disabled person, who could be in the room with me, but isn’t, and I’m not proud. I’m heartbroken. We should not have a society where the value of marginalized people is determined by how well they can scale often impossible obstacles that others will never know. I have been exceptional, and I shouldn’t have to be exceptional to be just barely getting by. But we live in a society where if you are a person of color, a disabled person, a single mother, or an LGBT person you have to be exceptional. And if you are exceptional by the standards put forth by white supremacist patriarchy, and you are lucky, you will most likely just barely get by. There’s nothing inspirational about that. (112)

Reading about Oluo checking her privilege and highlighting those who are even less privileged than she is only further reinforced my need to shut up and listen even more so than I have been.

And toward the end of the book as Oluo began looking to the future she hit the nail on the head.

It is our role not to shape the future, but to not fuck things up so badly that our kids will be too busy correcting the past to focus on the future. It is our job to be confused and dismayed by the future generation, and trust that if we would just stop trying to control them and instead support them, they will eventually find their way. (188)

I mean us Xennials/elder millennials, she’s right there with me, have started to move the marks and will continue voting local, asking questions and demanding answers, but we’re rapidly approaching the point where we’re just trying not to screw it up even more and are passing the torch to Gen Z and the Tik Tok generation (and someone help us) trust for them to find their way.

Recommendation: READ THIS BOOK, and for that matter read all of her writing, I’ve yet to be disappointed. It was a struggle NOT to highlight the entire book. I seriously want to buy copies of this, highlight it and send it to various people. Oluo showed a lot of restraint in limiting it to an introductory primer, I have no doubt that she could write an entire book for each of the seventeen chapters she did write and I would read every one of them. Her writing is approachable while being educational and her conversational tone reassures and challenges the reader when it needs to. Hopefully, everyone reads this book and then continues to re-read it and learn from it, because this book really is like lifting your foot to take the first step into a much larger eye-opening world.

Opening Line: “As a Black woman, race has always been a prominent part of my life.”

Closing Line: “So start talking, not just problems, but solutions. We can do this, together.” (Not whited out as this is a work of nonfiction.)

Additional Quotes from So You Want to Talk About Race
“These conversations will not be easy, but they will get easier over time. We have to commit to the process if we want to address race, racism, and racial oppression in our society. This book may not be easy as well. I am not known for pulling punches, but I’ve been occasionally thought of as funny. But it has been very hard to be funny in this book. There is real pain in our racially oppressive system, pain that I as a black woman feel. I was unable to set that aside while writing this book. I didn’t feel like laughing. This was a grueling, heart-wrenching book to write, and I’ve tried to lighten a little of that on the page, but I know that for some of you, this book will push and will push hard. For many white people, this book may bring you face-to-face with issues of race and privilege that will make you uncomfortable. For many people of color, this book may bring forward some of the trauma of experiences around race that you’ve experienced. But a centuries-old system of oppression and brutality is not an easy fix, and maybe we shouldn’t be looking for easy reads.” (6)

“Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior.” (12)

“There are very few hardships out there that hit only people of color and not white people, but there are a lot of hardships that hit people of color a lot more than white people.” (17)

“Disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantages facing people of color, just as brain cancer is not erased by talking about breast cancer. They are two different issues with two different treatments, and they require two different conversations.” (18)

“Over four hundred years of systemic oppression have set large groups of racial minorities at a distinct power disadvantage. If I call a white person a cracker, the worst I can do is ruin their day. If a white person thinks I’m a nigger, the worst they can do is get me fired, arrested, or even killed in a system that thinks the same—and has the resources to act on it.” (28)

“Systemic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.” (30)

“Tying racism to its systemic causes and effects will help others see the important difference between systemic racism, and anti-white bigotry.” (35)

“Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not.” (59)

“I feel very underprivileged as a black, queer woman, and it would be easy to dismiss calls to check my own privilege under the argument that it’s really those with a lot of privilege who should be doing the work and I’m too busy fighting racism and sexism to fight the few advantages I do have. But failing to check my own privilege means that my efforts to fight racism and sexism would leave out many of the women and people of color I claim to be fighting for. I march for black people, but am I marching for black trans women, disabled black people, incarcerated black people as well? The number of people I’d be leaving behind and continuing to oppress by refusing to check my privilege would make my efforts ineffective at best and harmful at worst.” (66)

“The possibilities of where you can leverage your privilege to make real, measurable change toward a better world are endless. Every day you are given opportunities to make the world better, by making yourself a little uncomfortable and asking, “who doesn’t have this same freedom or opportunity that I’m enjoying now?” These daily interactions are how systems of oppression are maintained, but with awareness, they can be how we tear those systems down. (69)

“But those who demand the smoking gun of a racial slur or swastika or burning cross before they will believe that an individual encounter with the police might be about race are ignoring what we know and what the numbers are bearing out: something is going on and it is not right. We are being targeted. And you can try to explain away one statistic due to geography, one away due to income—you can find reasons for numbers all day. But the fact remains: all across the country, in every type of neighborhood, people of color are being disproportionately criminalized. This is not all in our heads.” (87)

“Our early American police forces existed not only to combat crime, but also to return black Americans to slavery and control and intimidate free black populations. Police were rightfully feared and loathed by black Americans in the North and South.” (91)

“Black students make up only 16 percent of our school populations, and yet 31 percent of students who are suspended and 40 percent of students who are expelled are black. Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended than white students. Seventy percent of students who are arrested in school and referred to law enforcement are black.” (124)

“As long as we have had the spoken word, language has been one of the first tools deployed in efforts to oppress others. Words are how we process the world, how we form our societies, how we codify our morals. In order to make injustice and oppression palatable in a world with words that say that such things are unacceptable, we must come up with new words to distance ourselves from the realities of the harm we are perpetrating on others. This is how black people—human beings—become niggers. All oppression in race, class, gender, ability, religion—it all began with words.” (138)

“Words like ghetto, nappy, uppity, articulate, thug. All of these words can conjure up powerful emotions because they conjure up the powerful history, and present, that they have helped create.” (139)

“We can broadly define the concept of cultural appropriation as the adoption or exploitation of another culture by a more dominant culture.” (146)

“Rap is, in reality, a difficult and beautiful art form that requires not only musical and rhyming talent, but a mathematically complex sense of timing. Rap is a very diverse art form that can entertain, inform, enrage, comfort, and inspire. Like many art forms, many people will spend their entire lives working at it and will never be better than mediocre. Some, with rare talent, will rise to the top, others with rare talent will continue to toil in obscurity. But if you are a white rapper, you can be “okay” and go multi-platinum. Not only can a halfway decent white rapper sell millions of copies of a halfway decent album, raking in money that most black artists would never dream of, that white rapper is more likely to be accepted as ‘mainstream.'” (148)

“Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that prefers its culture cloaked in whiteness. Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that only respects culture cloaked in whiteness. Without that—if all culture (even the culture that appropriators claim to love and appreciate) were equally desired and respected, then imitations of other cultures would look like just that—imitations. If all cultures were equally respected, then wearing a feathered headdress to Coachella would just seem like the distasteful decision to get trashed in sacred artifacts. If all cultures were equally respected, then white college kids with dreadlocks would look like middle-class white kids wearing the protest of poor blacks against the suppression, degradation, and oppression of white colonialists as costumes. But we don’t live in a society that equally respects all cultures, which is why what would otherwise be seen as offensive and insensitive behavior, is instead treated as a birthright of white Americans. And because we do not live in a society that equally respects all cultures, the people of marginalized cultures are still routinely discriminated against for the same cultural practices that white cultures are rewarded for adopting and adapting for the benefit of white people. Until we do live in a society that equally respects all cultures, any attempts of the dominant culture to “borrow” from marginalized cultures will run the risk of being exploitative and insulting.” (150)

“Microaggressions are small daily insults and indignities perpetrated against marginalized or oppressed people because of their affiliation with that marginalized or oppressed group, and here we are going to talk about racial microaggressions—insults and indignities perpetrated against people of color. But microagressions are more than just annoyances. The cumulative effect of these constant reminders that you are ‘less than’ does real psychological damage.” (169)

“Our children see how they are allowed in the best colleges, but only if they live in a neighborhood that has enough public school funding to help them get there. Our children see how once they get into that college the curriculum will still teach and promote the history, culture, and politics that keep them oppressed. Our children are seeing their parents lose the homes they worked so hard to afford due to racist lending practices of banks who will never face consequences for their illegal deeds. Our children see how no matter how hard they work, no matter what they accomplish, they could still be in the next viral video as they are gunned down by a cop at a traffic stop. Our children see that, as the world is now, they have nothing to lose. And our children are remembering how many times we told them that they could do anything. Our children are remembering every time we talked about the civil rights movement and the fight for justice. And they are fighting. Our children are fighting school systems that teach from racist and colonialist narratives. Our children are fighting the exploitation of student athlete programs. Our children are fighting the language that perpetrates oppression. Our children are fighting to be seen as human beings without any precondition. And our children are fighting for more than just themselves. They have also inherited the vision and accomplishments of disability activists and of Stonewall. Our children believe that justice for people of color includes all people of color. And our children are not willing to let anything slide.” (185)

“When we say ‘Asian American’ we are talking about an incredibly broad swath of cultures and histories representing a very large portion of the globe. When we say “Asian American” we are talking about not just people of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese descent, but also South Asians, Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, Indian Americans, Hmong Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Samoans, Native Hawaiians, and more. When we say ‘Asian American’ we are talking about war refugees, tech professionals who first arrived on H-1B visas, and third-generation Midwesterners. When we say ‘Asian American’ we are talking about so much more than can be fit in a single stereotype.” (193)

“If you want to fight racism in America, you have to fight the model minority myth. Far too often, this wide-reaching form of racism is left out of our discussions on issues of racial oppression and discrimination. Far too often our Asian American friends and neighbors are not offered a seat at the equality and anti-racism table, and far too often their own efforts at combating anti-Asian racism are ignored by the broader social justice community.” (200)

“Conversations about race and racial oppression can certainly be tough, but that’s nothing compared to how tough fighting against racial oppression can be. Our humanity is worth a little discomfort, it’s actually worth a lot of discomfort. But if you live in this system of White Supremacy you are either fighting the system, or you are complicit. There is no neutrality to be had towards systems of injustice—it is not something you can just opt out of. If you believe in justice and equality, we are in this together, whether you like me or not.” (210)

“This does not mean that you have hate in your heart. You may intend to treat everyone equally. But it does mean that you have absorbed some fucked-up shit regarding race, and it will show itself in some fucked-up ways.” (218)

“Talk. Please talk and talk and talk some more. But also act. Act now, because people are dying now in this unjust system. How many lives have been ground up by racial prejudice and hate? How many opportunities have we already lost? Act and talk and learn and fuck up and learn some more and act again and do better. We have to do this all at once. We have to learn and fight at the same time. Because people have been waiting far too long for their chance to live as equals in this society.” (230)

“We cannot talk our way out of a racially oppressive system. We can talk our way into understanding, and we can then use that understanding to act.” (234)

“This book would not exist without the work of strong black women both past and present who have changed the way we all think about black womanhood and have made the world better for it. Audre Lorde, Michelle Alexander, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and so many more amazing women. Thank you for the generosity of your intellect and spirit. I hope one day to enlighten, encourage, and inspire a fraction of as many young black women as you have done and continue to do.” (241, Acknowledgements)