So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

A lot of people want to skip ahead to the finish line of racial harmony. Past all this unpleasantness to a place where all wounds are healed and the past is laid to rest.

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

Appreciation should benefit all cultures involved, and true appreciation does. But appropriation, more often than not, disproportionately benefits the dominant culture that is borrowing from marginalized cultures, and can even harm marginalized cultures.

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.

Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that prefers its culture cloaked in whiteness.

And this is where the anxiety lies, because when you are trying to not appropriate a culture, but also trying to live in a diverse world, it can be hard to know what is or is not going to offend.

Much of our oppressive actions are done in complete ignorance of their effect, or subconsciously—where we aren’t fully aware of why we are acting aggressively toward someone.

The person locking their car doors as you walk past their vehicle.

These microaggressions help hold the system of White Supremacy together, because if we didn’t have all these little ways to separate and dehumanize people, we’d empathize with them more fully, and then we’d have to really care about the system that is crushing them.

often, the person you are talking with will refuse to see what you are saying and will become defensive. And that’s okay. Even that is progress.

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.

The privilege you enjoy in not having to constantly suffer these indignities requires that you at least take responsibility for how your actions may be adding to them and the pain that causes.

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.

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.”

As a parent of a child of color, you try to shield your kids from the harsh realities of the world when you can, while preparing them for the ugliness that they don’t have the privilege of being kept safe from.

Our focus on exceptionalism has been used to justify the murder of the less exceptional. Our focus on allowing “good” people of color to join the ranks of “good” whites has allowed a criminal justice system to swallow up an entire generation deemed “bad.”

The debates we have about gay marriage, transgender bathroom rights, immigration, whether it’s “all lives matter” or “black lives matter” have been largely settled in the social world of our youth and they are looking at us dismayed and perplexed at why we just don’t get it.

They often ask for things that we were brainwashed into believing was “too much to ask for.”

matter what our intentions, everything we say and do in the pursuit of justice will one day be outdated, ineffective, and yes, probably wrong.

It is my job as a parent to help give them the platform they need to build their way on, or to smash once they’ve decided it doesn’t work for them.

It is our role not to shape the future, but to not fuck things up so badly that our kids will be too busy correcting the past to focus on the future.

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

The model minority myth erases religious minorities, it erases refugees, it erases queer Asian Americans.

the myth of the “model minority” has become a collection of stereotypes about Asian Americans, presenting them as an “ideal minority group” in the eyes of White Supremacy.

While Asian Americans make up between 35 and 60 percent of the workforce in top tech companies like Google and Facebook, they are less than half as likely to reach management levels in the tech industry as their white counterparts.

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.

We must be willing to fight the white supremacist narrative designed to divide Asian Americans from other racial and ethnic groups in the US and to fight for their freedom and equality as we do our own.

They called to all of the messaging that I and so many other black people had been inundated with their entire lives—there are black people who deserve equality, and black people who don’t—and if you don’t, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

But a quieter, gentler voice did not bring a quieter, gentler world.

So when people say that they don’t like my tone, or when they say they can’t support the “militancy” of Black Lives Matter, or when they say that it would be easier if we just didn’t talk about race all the time—I ask one question: Do you believe in justice and equality?

No discussion about racism is just about one incident for people of color, because we cannot divorce ourselves from the past pain of systemic racism, or the future repercussions of current abuse.

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.

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.

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.

THIS!!!!

There is no way you can inherit white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments and not be racist.

But it does mean that you have absorbed some fucked-up shit regarding race, and it will show itself in some fucked-up ways.

do you want to look like a better person, or do you want to be a better person?

Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don’t know

Do you know what the racial achievement gap is in your school district?

We cannot talk our way out of a racially oppressive system. We can talk our way into understanding, and we can then use that understanding to act.

Racial oppression starts in our homes, our offices, our cities, and our states, and it can end there as well. So start talking, not just problems, but solutions. We can do this, together.