So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

For our mom, we were black and beautiful and smart and talented and kind—and that’s all that mattered. And in the confines of our home, it was all that mattered. But as we left home, and our mom began to see us interact as adults with the real world, she began to suspect that there was more to being black in this world than she had previously thought. I could tell that this made my mom uncomfortable, to know that the babies that she had birthed from her own body had entire universes she couldn’t see, so the more that my world and my career became focused on race, the less my mom acknowledged it. She just really didn’t know what to say.