So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

I started writing down my frustrations and my heartbreak.

Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior.

Our politics, our education system, our infrastructure—anywhere there is a finite amount of power, influence, visibility, wealth, or opportunity.

White Supremacy is this nation’s oldest pyramid scheme. Even those who have lost everything to the scheme are still hanging in there, waiting for their turn to cash out.

“people like you” is a good warning that a conversation is about to head into pretty racist territory.

Systemic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.

a privilege has to come with somebody else’s disadvantage—otherwise, it’s not a privilege.

When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.

A 2016 review of a thirteen-month period showed that Oakland police handcuffed 1,466 black people in nonarrest traffic stops, and only 72 white people5, and a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that blacks were almost 4 times more likely to be subject to force from police—including force by hand (such as hitting and choking), pepper spray, tazer, and gun—than white people.

“black-on-black” or “brown-on-brown” crime. Those terms are 100 percent racist. It’s crime. We don’t call crime that happens in white communities “white-on-white” crime, even though the majority of crimes against white people are perpetrated by other white people.

First introduced by President Kennedy and expanded by President Johnson in the ’60s, affirmative action sought to help reverse extreme racial gaps in federal employment and higher education. The intention was to get federal employers to proactively fight racial discrimination in their hiring practices and to increase the African American undergraduate population above its then dismal 5 percent. Shortly after its introduction, affirmative action was expanded to all women.

when the Supreme Court upheld a 10 percent set-aside of contract funds for minority businesses in 1980, that percentage was far below representative of the 17 percent minority population at the time.

Studies have shown that if you have a “black-sounding” name, you are four times less likely to be called for a job interview.

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.

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.”

Think of the words used to subtly signify race. Words like ghetto, nappy, uppity, articulate, thug. All of these words can conjure up powerful emotions because they conjure up the powerful history, and present, that they have helped create.

We still live in a country where our hair is seen as “wild,” as “unattractive,” as “unprofessional” as “ghetto.”

You aren’t oppressed, you’re just lazy.” This is a common refrain that many non-Asian people of color hear from white people when they try to address systemic racism in America. The model minority myth is often used to separate Asian Americans from other people of color by using their perceived socioeconomic and academic success and docile nature to compare and contrast with black Americans, Hispanic Americans,

Because no matter what we ask for, if it threatens the system of White Supremacy, it will always be seen as too much.

There is no neutrality to be had towards systems of injustice—it is not something you can just opt out of.

White Supremacy is, as I’ve said earlier, insidious by design. The racism required to uphold White Supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. 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.

Economic exploitation is one of the cornerstones of racial oppression.

The recent housing crash brought many of the racist practices of some of our biggest banks to light, but banks have been exploiting and abusing people of color for hundreds of years.