So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

You are, at times, kind and mean, generous and selfish, witty and dull. Sometimes you are all of these things at once. And if you are white in a white supremacist society, you are racist. If you are male in a patriarchy, you are sexist. If you are able-bodied, you are ableist. If you are anything above poverty in a capitalist society, you are classist. You can sometimes be all of these things at once. You do, as Walt Whitman said, contain multitudes.

But it does mean that you have absorbed some fucked-up shit regarding race, and it will show itself in some fucked-up ways. You may not know why you clutch your purse a little harder when a black man walks by you, but in the moment you do, you are being racist. You may not know why when you see a bad driver on the road and you recognize they are Asian a little voice inside you goes “Aha!” but in that moment, you are being racist. You may not know why you are pleasantly surprised that the Latinx person you are talking to is “so articulate” but in that moment, you are being racist.

It sucks to know that to some people you will forever be the person who harmed them. It sucks to know that someone you have harmed in the past may one day read in your obituary “John was a generous and loyal friend to all he met” and disagree. You’ve tried so hard to be a good person, but your intentions cannot erase the harm that your actions cause.

You are not living as a person of color. You will never fully understand the impact that sustained, systemic racism has on people of color. You will never be able to fully empathize with the pain your actions may have caused. Nothing will get you there. Do not discount someone’s complaint because their emotions seem foreign to you.