So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

I started writing out of frustration. Frustration that there could be so many words used to discuss a single topic without actually getting to the core truths of it. Frustration that those words were being used just to stir emotions that would eventually be released in a tweet or a Facebook post and then immediately discarded, replaced by the next outrage. Almost every article I wrote was born of the frustration of watching people discuss issues—real issues that were impacting real lives—without actually saying anything.

But no matter how daunting, you are here because you want to hear and you want to be heard. You are here because you know that something is very wrong and you want a change. We can find our way to each other. We can find a way to our truths. I have seen it happen. My life is a testament to it. And it all starts with conversation.

Money is also a social construct—a series of rules and agreements we all made up while pretending that these pieces of paper are worth our entire lives. But we cannot simply stop thinking of money and it will cease to enthrall us. It has woven its way into every part of our lives. It has shaped our past and our futures. It has become alive.

Even in our class and labor movements, the promise that you will get more because others exist to get less, calls to people.

Things are never cut-and-dry. And because we have come up in a society where talking about race is just not something you “do” in polite company, we don’t have a lot of practice in putting words to racial issues.

when it’s all tallied up the end result will still show, more often than not, measurably different outcomes for people depending on race. 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.

It is about race if it fits into a broader pattern of events that disproportionately or differently affect people of color.

As long as race exists and as long as racial oppression

exists, race will touch almost every aspect of our lives.

Race is more than just pain and oppression, it’s also cu...

Personally, my blackness is a history of strength, beauty, and creativity that I draw on every day; it is more that than the history of the horrors that racism has wrought. My blackness has its own language, its own jokes, its own fashion. My blackness is a community and a family and I’m very grateful for it. Humans are resilient and creative beings, and out of a social construct created to brutalize and oppress, we’ve man...

And if you are a person of color, know this: the world will try to tell you that what you are seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling is wrong. The world will tell you that you do not know how to interpret what is happening to you and to your community. But you are not wrong, and you have just as much right to be heard and believed as anybody else. If you think it’s about race, you are right.

But if somebody does want a productive conversation and genuinely believes that being called “cracker” is the same as being called “nigger” and feels angry and invalidated by the insistence that both do not meet your definition of racism, they will say so. This is an educational opportunity. This is a great way to let that person know that you do hear them, and that your experiences do not erase theirs because even though their experience is valid, it is a different experience.

conversations, even if they seem fruitless at first, can plant a seed to greater understanding.

I explained that while I had definitely inherited light-skin privilege due to my mixed heritage I did not feel that whiteness was something that any person with brown skin and kinky hair could inherit, because race doesn’t care what your parents look like—just look at all the light-skinned slaves sold away from their black mothers by their white fathers.

I recommend practicing looking for your privilege at first when you are in a neutral situation. Sit down and think about the advantages you’ve had in life. Have you always had good mental health? Did you grow up middle class? Are you white? Are you male? Are you nondisabled? Are you neuro-typical? Are you a documented citizen of the country you live in? Did you grow up in a stable home environment? Do you have stable housing? Do you have reliable transportation? Are you cisgender? Are you straight? Are you thin, tall, or conventionally attractive? Take some time to really dig deep through all of the advantages that you have that others may not. Write them down.

When you first became aware of an area of your privilege, it did not appear to you as “privilege.” You had to be able to see what your advantage was, that others did not have that advantage, and that it was influencing your words and decisions in a way that could be harming others.