So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

why do we talk about police brutality like it is about race? At its core, police brutality is about power and corruption. Police brutality is about the intersection of fear and guns.

Police brutality is about accountability.

And the power and corruption that enable police brutality put all citizens, ...

all across the country, in every type of neighborhood, people of color are being disproportionately criminalized.

I know that it’s hard to believe that the people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I’m not lying and I’m not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.

Our police forces were born from Night Patrols, who had the principal task of controlling black and Native American populations in New England, and Slave Patrols, who had the principal task of catching escaped black slaves and sending them back to slave masters.

Our police force was not created to serve black Americans; it was created to police black Americans and serve white Americans.

Police abuse and oppression of people of color has not stopped at black Americans. Hispanic and Native American populations have also long been the recipients of higher rates of arrest, assault, and death at the hands of police, and police have been used throughout history to intimidate, punish, and silence activists and protestors in all minority racial and ethnic groups.

When looking at anti-black bias in police actions, we are looking at the product of police cultural history that has always viewed black Americans as adversaries, and of a popular culture that has always portrayed black Americans as violent criminals not worthy of protection.

So while every Friday students would eagerly line up to pick out their piece of candy, my brother would sit. On the floor. Because he was homeless. He couldn’t afford rent on his desk.

School systemizinv racism

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.

First introduced by President Kennedy and expanded by President Johnson in the ’60s, affirmative action sought to help reverse extreme racial gaps in federal employment and higher education. The intention was to get federal employers to proactively fight racial discrimination in their hiring practices and to increase the African American undergraduate population above its then dismal 5 percent.

OUR PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM SEES BLACK AND BROWN children as violent, disruptive, unpredictable future criminals.

The school-to-prison pipeline starts with the high level of suspensions and expulsions mentioned earlier.

Psychologists attest that overly harsh discipline destroys children’s trust in teachers and schools, along with damaging their self-esteem.

Data shows that, when controlling for poverty, schools with SROs have nearly five times the amount of in-school arrests as schools without SROs.

Talk to your schools and school boards. Even if you do not have black or brown children, you should be asking your schools what their disciplinary procedures are, what the rate of suspension and expulsion for black and Latinx students is, and what the racial “achievement gap” for their school is and what they plan to do about it.

Interview Qs

“opportunity gap”

Challenge the stereotyping of black and brown youth, and the criminalization of black and brown youth culture. A swagger is not intent, baggy jeans are not intent, a bandana is not intent. This is culture, and any suggestion otherwise is racist.

Challenge the legitimacy of white-centered education.

WORDS HAVE POWER.

As long as we have had the spoken word, language has been one of the first tools deployed in efforts to oppress others.

All oppression in race, class, gender, ability, religion—it all began with words.

people of color who had never had the power to oppress with those words would be able to use them without invoking that same oppression.

At its core, cultural appropriation is about ownership of one’s culture,

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

Some modern and fairly well known examples of cultural appropriation by the dominant white culture in the West are things like the use of American Indian headdresses as casual fashion, the use of the bindi as an accessory, the adoption of belly-dancing into fitness routines, and basically every single “ethnic” Halloween costume.

And in all of this, the music that we see on television and hear on our radio is further divorced from the struggle and triumph that inspired it from Africa, through slavery, and through today. The art form that black Americans have relied upon for generations is no longer theirs.

Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that only respects culture cloaked in whiteness.

racial microaggressions—insults and indignities perpetrated against people of color.

Microaggressions are constant reminders that you don’t belong, that you are less than, that you are not worthy of the same respect that white people are afforded.

“I can see this is making you uncomfortable, but this is a real problem that needs to be addressed.”

people of color have very good reasons for why they choose to speak out and why they choose not to,

Before you respond at all, pause and catch your breath and remember that your goal is to understand and to have a better relationship with the person you are talking to.

As the newer generation casts us aside it is very easy to find yourself feeling old and… wrong. What happens when the youth roll their eyes at principles we’ve spent our lives fighting for, when they’ve decided that they are not only outdated, but oppressive?

The model minority myth fetishizes Asian Americans—reducing a broad swath of the world’s population to a simple stereotype.

You aren’t oppressed, you’re just lazy.”

We will never be free until we are all seen and valued for our unique culture, history, talents, and challenges.

Do you believe in justice and equality?

Tone policing is when someone (usually the privileged person) in a conversation or situation about oppression shifts the focus of the conversation from the oppression being discussed to the way it is being discussed.

But do not let your feelings about a person within the movement become the focus of your work toward fighting racial oppression.

We like to think of our character in the same way it is written in our obituaries.