So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

This profit itself is the greater promise for nonracialized people—you will get more because they exist to get less. That promise is durable, and unless attacked directly, it will outlive any attempts to address class as a whole.

It seemed far more important to him that the white people who were spreading and upholding racism be spared the effects of being called racist, than sparing his black friend the effects of that racism.

definition of racism: a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power.

“This behavior is linked to the increased suspension, expulsion, and detention of Hispanic youth in our schools and sets an example of behavior for the children witnessing this teacher’s racism that will influence the way these children are treated by their peers, and how they are treated as adults.”

Intersectionality, the belief that our social justice movements must consider all of the intersections of identity, privilege, and oppression that people face in order to be just and effective, is the number one requirement of all of the work that I do.

But if you don’t embrace intersectionality, even if you make progress for some, you will look around one day and find that you’ve become the oppressor of others.

How might race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, or sex impact this subject?

Privilege has been used to silence people for so long, that you will need to put out the effort to let people know that you will value and respect their input.

The vast majority of teachers are white females, and many are unfamiliar with and not trained to work with the different ways in which black and brown children—especially black and brown boys—can interact with each other and with adults.

what kind of training would be appropriate?

A swagger is not intent, baggy jeans are not intent, a bandana is not intent. This is culture, and any suggestion otherwise is racist.

schools focused on the needs of white children, learning from textbooks teaching white culture, and taking tests designed for white students, our children of color are going to have a hard time engaging with and succeeding in schools.

what would it look like to have these designed for the needs of Black children?

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.

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.

Not all words are equally powerful, because not all words have the same history. Take the word “cracker.” Cracker is a slur sometimes used to refer to white people. Many white people have argued

that it is just as bad as using the word “nigger.” But say both words aloud right now—loudly, which one turns your stomach? That feeling in your gut when you say the word “nigger” loudly and clearly, that is the history of the word being invoked with it as well. Cracker simply does not have that. 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 (note: if this is where you say “what abou...

This is why, even if some of these words have been “reclaimed” by some in the community they were used to oppress, when these words are used by white people, that use will continue to be abusive. Because they are still benefitting from how these words have been used while people of color still suffer.

why would a well-meaning white person want to say these words in the first place? Why would you want to invoke that pain on people of color? Why would you want

to rub in the fact that you are privileged enough to not be negatively impacted by the legacy of racial oppression that these words helped create?

But words only lose their power when first the impact of those words are no longer felt, not the other way around.

It is completely fair that a word used to help create and maintain the oppression of others for your benefit would not be able to be used by you

without invoking that oppression, while 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.

himself. I closed the lid on the box, walked over to the pepperoni pizza, and grabbed two giant slices. And I ate, in public, without fear, for the first time in years. Not once in the two days I was at the conference did anybody make fun of my name. Not once in the two-day conference did anybody even glance at my hair. Not once in the two-day conference was I aware of the loudness of my voice or the size of my ass. Not once in the two-day conference did anybody question the academic achievements that had brought me there—we were all there because we were smart kids who had worked very hard. For two days I got to feel like the majority of my classmates had felt almost every day, like a complete human being. I don’t know how to describe what those two days were like for me except to say that I

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. This is something that can happen in a conversation, but can also apply to critiques of entire civil rights organizations and movements.

When you talk about oppression with oppressed people, you are talking with hurt, scared, angry, and grieving people.

When people of color speak out about systemic racism, they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you. They are not doing this because they enjoy it; it is an incredibly painful and vulnerable experience. We do this because we have to, because systemic racism is killing us. And yes, that pain and fear and anger will sometimes show in our words and our actions. 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.