So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

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

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.

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.

Disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantages facing people of color, just as brain cancer is not erased by talking about breast cancer. They are two different issues with two different treatments, and they require two different conversations.

Often, being a person of color in white-dominated society is like being in an abusive relationship with the world.

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.

Tying racism to its systemic causes and effects will help others see the important difference between systemic racism, and anti-white bigotry.

Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not.

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 school-to-prison pipeline starts with the high level of suspensions

Yes, this does mean that people of color can freely say some words that white people cannot without risking scorn or condemnation. That may seem very unfair to some, maybe even to you. But it is fair. 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. The real unfairness lies in the oppression and inequality that these words helped create and maintain.