So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

People of color are not asking white people to believe their experiences so that they will fear the police as much as people of color do. They are asking because they want white people to join them in demanding their right to be able to trust the police like white people do.

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.

Affirmative action is a crucial tool if we want to mitigate some of the effects of systemic racism and misogyny in our society.

White women still make only 82 cents for every white man’s dollar, black women only earn 65 cents for every white man’s dollar, and Hispanic women earn even less at 58 cents for every white man’s dollar. The wage gap between white and black men has not budged since Reagan’s cuts to affirmative action began in the ’80s, with black men making 73 cents for every white man’s dollar, and the wage gap between white and Hispanic men has actually grown since 1980, going from 71 cents down to 69 cents for every dollar made by a white man.2

Black and Hispanic students are far more likely to be suspended from school, starting as early as preschool. An average of 16 percent of black students and 7 percent of Hispanic students are suspended each year, compared to only 5 percent of white students. And while the rate of suspension for white students has remained steady for over thirty years, the rate of suspension for black students has almost tripled.3

And while the arguments around affirmative action often come down to race, white women have been by far the biggest recipients of the benefits of affirmative action.

In truth, even if implemented across the public and private sectors, even if vigorously enforced, affirmative action will never be more than a Band-Aid on a festering sore as long as it’s still just trying to correct the end effects of systemic racism.

when affirmative action is viewed as “enough” it can be detrimental to the fight for racial justice. We must never forget that without systemic change and without efforts to battle the myriad of ways in which systemic racism impacts people of color of all classes, backgrounds, and abilities, our efforts at ending systemic racial oppression will fail. We must refuse to be placated by measures that only serve a select few—and affirmative action does only serve a select few. We must never forget that people of color who will never want to go to college, who will never be able to go to college, who cannot work, who choose not to work, who choose to work in the public sector—they all deserve to be treated as human beings free from racial bigotry and persecution. We must remember that there are other, huge crises affecting communities of color that also need to be addressed with urgency (like the mass incarceration of black and Hispanic men in America). But the work to truly end systemic racism, while crucial, is a long and hard road. And while we are fighting that battle, many people of color are being crushed by a racist educational and employment system and their children are inheriting that same disadvantage as they try to enter into higher education and the workforce. Affirmative action can help with that.

We have to fight for our future, we have to work for change, but we also need to help people now.

Or, I can assume that the school system is marginalizing, criminalizing, and otherwise failing our black and brown kids in large numbers.

we have a serious problem with how our schools are educating and disciplining black and brown children. And that problem is called the school-to-prison pipeline. The “school-to-prison pipeline” is the term commonly used to describe the alarming number of black and brown children who are funneled directly and indirectly from our schools into our prison industrial complex, contributing to devastating levels of mass incarceration that lead to one in three black men and one in six Latino men going to prison in their lifetimes, in addition to increased levels of incarceration for women of color.

The disproportionately punitive levels of school discipline toward black and brown children does more than impact a student’s year. Psychologists attest that overly harsh discipline destroys children’s trust in teachers and schools, along with damaging their self-esteem.

While black children are no more likely than children of other races to have developmental or learning disabilities, they are the most likely to be placed in special education programs. Students of color who have been labeled “disabled” are more likely (by 31 percent) to be suspended and expelled from school than other kids, a harmful marriage of both ableism and racism. One in four black, American Indian, Pacific Islander, and mixed-race boys identified by schools as having a developmental disability was suspended in the 2011–2012 school year.6

These officers have become an easy way for schools to delegate their disciplinary responsibilities to a criminal justice system that has already shown quantifiable racial bias. Data shows that, when controlling for poverty, schools with SROs have nearly five times the amount of in-school arrests as schools without SROs.

Disabled kids of color are the most likely to be made victims of overly punitive school discipline and criminalization. Further, once criminalized, disabled people of color are more likely to face brutality by police.

We often focus on the outcomes of the school-to-prison pipeline as the ultimate tragedy—the high drop-out rates, future poverty and joblessness, the likelihood of repeated incarceration—but when I look at our school-to-prison pipeline, the biggest tragedy to me is the loss of childhood joy. When our kids spend eight hours a day in a system that is looking for reasons to punish them, remove them, criminalize them—our kids do not get to be kids. Our kids do not get to be rambunctious, they do not get to be exuberant, they do not get to be rebellious, they do not get to be defiant. Our kids do not get to fuck up the way other kids get to; our kids will not get to look back fondly on their teenage hijinks—because these get them expelled or locked away. Do not wait until black and brown kids are grown into hurt and hardened adults to ask “What happened? What can we do?” We cannot give back childhoods lost. Help us save our children now.

around. We live in a world where the impacts of systemic racism are still threatening the lives of countless people of color today. Yes, this does mean that people of color can freely say some words that white people cannot without risking scorn or condemnation.

At its core, cultural appropriation is about ownership of one’s culture, and since culture is defined both collectively and individually, the definition and sentiment about cultural appropriation changes with one’s identification and sentiment about aspects of their culture.

We can broadly define the concept of cultural appropriation as the adoption or exploitation of another culture by a more dominant culture. This is not usually the wholesale adoption of an entire culture, but usually just attractive bits and pieces that are taken and used by the dominant culture.

The problem of cultural appropriation is not in the desire to participate in aspects of a different culture that you admire. The problem of cultural appropriation is primarily linked to the power imbalance between the culture doing the appropriating and the culture being appropriated. That power imbalance allows the culture being appropriated to be distorted and redefined by the dominant culture and siphons any material or financial benefit of that piece of culture away to the dominant culture, while marginalized cultures are still persecuted for living in that culture.

Even if a culturally appropriative act means to respect culture, it cannot if it can’t understand and respect the past and present power dynamics defining that culture’s interaction with the dominant culture.

The gain in popularity did little to increase the respectability of black music, until white artists began imitating it—and then most of the respectability and fame was given to the white artists. Think of artists like Elvis Presley who have been canonized in the annals of music history for work that was lifted almost wholesale from the backs of black musicians whose names most Americans will never know.

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.

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.

But what actually is not fair, is the expectation that a dominant culture can just take and enjoy and profit from the beauty and art and creation of an oppressed culture, without taking on any of the pain and oppression people of that culture had to survive while creating it.

But still, he thought that my hair, growing on my head, from my body, was within his jurisdiction. Still, my hair would be a tool of oppression, even if it was to belittle other black women. My hair still existed for his use. Even then, even in a state as removed from whiteness as it could be, my hair was not my own.

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. Regular exposure to microaggressions causes a person of color to feel isolated and invalidated. The inability to predict where and when a microaggression may occur leads to hypervigilance, which can then lead to anxiety disorders and depression. Studies have shown that people subjected to higher levels of microaggressions are more likely to exhibit the mental and physical symptoms of depression.1

If you witness racial microaggressions against someone else, you should strongly consider speaking out as well—especially if you are a white person.

Also, please take the lead of the person of color who is being directly harmed by the microaggression. If it seems like they do not want the issue addressed, do not decide to come to their rescue anyway

It is also important to make sure that when confronting microaggressions against others, you are not doing so in a way that will place the person of color you are defending at greater risk or will increase the burden on them. Don’t make enemies for them—help when you are reasonably confident that you can do some good.

And if that person of color is already speaking out and looks like they could use some support, offer it!

The fact that you hurt someone doesn’t mean that you are a horrible person, but the fact that you meant well doesn’t absolve you of guilt. Do not make this about your ego.

Talking about microaggressions is hard. It’s hard for the person constantly having to bring up the abuses against them, and it’s hard for the person constantly feeling like they are doing something wrong. But if you want this to stop—if you want the deluge of little hurts against people of color to stop, if you want the normalization of racism to stop—you have to have these conversations. When it comes to racial oppression, it really is the little things that count.

I asked him why he didn’t want to say the pledge. “Because I’m an atheist, so I don’t like pledging under god. I don’t believe in pledging to countries, I think it encourages war. And I don’t think this country treats people who look like me very well so the ‘liberty and justice for all’ part is a lie. And I don’t think that every day we should all be excited about saying a lie.”

The model minority myth fetishizes Asian Americans—reducing a broad swath of the world’s population to a simple stereotype. The model minority myth places undue burdens and expectations on Asian American youth and erases any who struggle to live up to them. The model minority myth erases religious minorities, it erases refugees, it erases queer Asian Americans. The model minority myth gives a pretty blanket for society to hide its racism against Asian Americans under, while separating them from other people of color who suffer from the same white supremacist system. The model minority myth is active racism that is harming Asian Americans, and we need to talk about it.

The model minority myth makes it even harder for struggling Asian American students to find academic success,

Since the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, many Sikhs and Hindus have reported being the victims of hate attacks by those mistaking them for Muslim Americans.

Between 41 and 61 percent of Asian American women will be physically or sexually abused by their partners in their lifetime—twice the national average for all women.

Americans. If you want to fight racism in America, you have to fight the model minority myth.

We will never be free until we are all seen and valued for our unique culture, history, talents, and challenges. We cannot win this battle against racism if we do not realize that there is no set of racial or ethnic stereotypes that will set us free, no matter how appealing they seem on the surface.

Their goal of freedom from racial oppression was and is a direct threat to the system of White Supremacy.

So what is tone policing? 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. Tone policing prioritizes the comfort of the privileged person in the situation over the oppression of the disadvantaged person.

Most damagingly, tone policing places prerequisites on being heard and being helped.

If you’ve been privileged enough to not suffer from the cumulative effects of systemic racism and are therefore able to look at racially charged situations one at a time, and then let it go, please recognize that very few people of color are able to enter into discussions on racism with the same freedom.

But to see all that pain, and how we fight still after entire lifetimes of struggle—and then to tell us to be more polite is just plain cruel. To refuse to listen to someone’s cries for justice and equality until the request comes in a language you feel comfortable with is a way of asserting your dominance over them in the situation.

By tone policing, you are increasing that disadvantage by insisting that you get to determine if their grievances are valid and will only decide they are so if, on top of everything they are already enduring, they make the effort to prioritize your comfort.

When you instead shift your focus to getting people of color to fight oppression in a way in which you approve, racial justice is no longer your main goal—your approval is.

But know that if you are a privileged person trying to impose your wishes on social justice movements, you are trying to remake that movement in your image, which is exactly what social justice movements are fighting against.

You are not doing any favors, you are doing what is right. If you are white, remember that White Supremacy is a system you benefit from and that your privilege has helped to uphold. Your efforts to dismantle White Supremacy are expected of decent people who believe in justice. You are not owed gratitude or friendship from people of color for your efforts. We are not thanked for cleaning our own houses.

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.