Book Review: "So You Want To Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo
You know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is, right? It's where, when you know next to nothing about a topic, you think you're more of an expert in something than you are. It's why I don't hire seasonal tax help: they get a little bit of training and they dangerously think they can do more than they can. (I hire data entry people now and do NOT train on tax prep and get a better result, counter-intuitively.)
I was raised white in Michigan and Vermont. I would have told you I knew about racism because... sheesh, I don't remember why I thought I did. I didn't. I've been gradually getting educated basically since a day a woman yelled at me that she wasn't going to go to a Women's March until I went to a Black Lives Matter March. I've always worked to "Smash the Patriarchy" and work on feminist goals and quipped that I couldn't cure racism until I'd fixed sexism. I figured I'd just stay in my lane and work on my piece of the puzzle and it'd all come together with what others were doing and, voila, patriarchy: smashed.
Trump's election brought racism into sharp focus. Learning that White Supremacy is a continuum and I was on it was a shock. (I had comfortably thought only the most obvious overt pieces were racist. Nope. There's a whole lot more.)
So I've been reading and learning. I read "Waking Up White" by Debby Irving, who went through a similar journey as she got hit by a clue stick, and then helpfully provided one to hit me over the head with, too. It's a good book at the start, but she suffered from not having good editing: that book could have been half as long with more impact. I give permission to anyone reading this to get through the first five chapters or so and then put it down. There are better books to go to next.
Robin Diangelo's book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" is an EXCELLENT next book, or perhaps a good one to start with. It says, "hey, when you start learning about racial injustice it's going to make you feel all sorts of things and most of them aren't helpful so here's how you handle it." This book is slim and perfectly edited: it flows quickly, and there isn't a word out of place. I feel like every white person should be required to read White Fragility before they start to do anti-racism work, as it gives us all some compassion about how hard it is while still not letting us off the hook.
Ijeoma Oluo's book, "So You Want to Talk About Race" is as cleanly written and edited as any book I've ever read. It also flows quite quickly. She often starts a chapter/topic with a personal anecdote. She is completely filled with compassion for white people trying to be anti-racist (her mother is white, and the conversation with her mother about race is both hilarious and possibly the spark for this book.)
I took a lot of notes in this one. There was a line on page 32 that was hard to look at, so I'll put this out there and process it a bit, because I think it was the hardest lift for me. She said, "The ultimate goal of racism was the profit and comfort of the white race, specifically, of rich white men." I am a rich white person and hearing this really causes some revulsion in me. How can I possibly profit from racism, I protest?!? But then I calm down and realize a few things: the slave trade, that shipment in 1619, truly WAS all about enriching white people. The structure they put into place was designed to keep them rich (return their lost property, etc) and then create a cheap labor force even after slavery was made illegal (see prison workers, sharecroppers, and the miserablely low minimum wage today.) The idea that some people are just meant to serve is crack cocaine for white people who want servants while also wanting to feel good about ourselves. Yeah, racism is about keeping white people on top.
If you can't sit with that, can't handle that discomfort, then go back to Robin Diangelo's White Fragility for a while and then come back to this, because Ijeoma Oluo keeps going. It doesn't actually get any harder than this, it's just that topics like this keep coming at us. For example, on page 64 she starts talking about how my advantage is someone else's disadvantage. I've always figured that social injustice could be cleared up and we'd all have the same privileges, that I wasn't LUCKY, she was just UNLUCKY so we cure that and she's lucky, too. But all too often there really IS an element of advantage. Every time black workers are NOT proportional in the workplace it's because some white person got a job when a black person didn't. (If racism weren't at play the levels of black and white workers would be proportional to the population. She trashes the concept that you can't find equally or better qualified black people for every job.)
Her conversation about cops on page 91 was really instructive. I've been able to hold "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" in my head at the same time. Dare I say, "all lives matter, so duh". But when you start to get the history, that police are there for the comfort of white people, that it starts to be clearer that there's a structural problem with policing that isn't going to be cured with some anti-bias training. It's why implicit bias in police forces is correlated with the racism of their local environment rather than with their own race or their exposure to anti-bias training. (Did you see that study? It said to cure racial bias in your police force, work on improving it in the entire community. It's a big ask, but it's a big problem that requires a big solution.)
The "school to prison pipeline" was something I had heard about but known nothing about. Same with the "model minority". Her final chapter on "Talking is great, but what else can I do?" is where I have landed for my junior year of this education. I'm going to ask my candidates for mayor what they plan to do about racial bias in the police force (a school resource officer arrested a black teen last year in a WTF moment.) I'm going to ask what they plan to do about the racial achievement gap in our schools. I'm going to ask my candidates what racial justice initiatives they are promoting.
I'm going out to the internet to hire vendors lately. I'm trying to seek out minority-owned or businesses employing a majority-minority for vendors when I can. I'm at least looking. I listen to Black Twitter (and fund at least one patreon, but am about to add another). I volunteer with "White Nonsense Roundup" from time to time. I've made "add a woman of color" to my women's social group as a priority for two years running, challenging everyone to seek out women who are not like us already to join. (We've managed to affirmatively seek a few lesbians, so wuhoo, it's diversity in terms of the 150 year old Iowa-born sorority, but we can do better.)
I'm on a D&I committee for my professional association and am doing a Diversity & Inclusion training for financial planners in November. This is a "see one do one teach one" sort of thing: each white person who takes on anti-racism work spreads it to another (or a few) and we, bit by bit, reach that tipping point that happened in my lifetime with regards to homophobia.
So, in conclusion, yeah, read this book. But perhaps read White Fragility first if you literally have NO anti-racism training at all under your belt. Because in this society, if you haven't actively worked to become anti-racist, I have bad news for you. You're racist the way fish are wet.
Image source: Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005) “Building a Multi-Ethnic, Inclusive & Antiracist Organization-Tools for Liberation Packet for Anti-Racist Activists, Allies, & Critical Thinkers”
I was raised white in Michigan and Vermont. I would have told you I knew about racism because... sheesh, I don't remember why I thought I did. I didn't. I've been gradually getting educated basically since a day a woman yelled at me that she wasn't going to go to a Women's March until I went to a Black Lives Matter March. I've always worked to "Smash the Patriarchy" and work on feminist goals and quipped that I couldn't cure racism until I'd fixed sexism. I figured I'd just stay in my lane and work on my piece of the puzzle and it'd all come together with what others were doing and, voila, patriarchy: smashed.
Trump's election brought racism into sharp focus. Learning that White Supremacy is a continuum and I was on it was a shock. (I had comfortably thought only the most obvious overt pieces were racist. Nope. There's a whole lot more.)
So I've been reading and learning. I read "Waking Up White" by Debby Irving, who went through a similar journey as she got hit by a clue stick, and then helpfully provided one to hit me over the head with, too. It's a good book at the start, but she suffered from not having good editing: that book could have been half as long with more impact. I give permission to anyone reading this to get through the first five chapters or so and then put it down. There are better books to go to next.
Robin Diangelo's book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" is an EXCELLENT next book, or perhaps a good one to start with. It says, "hey, when you start learning about racial injustice it's going to make you feel all sorts of things and most of them aren't helpful so here's how you handle it." This book is slim and perfectly edited: it flows quickly, and there isn't a word out of place. I feel like every white person should be required to read White Fragility before they start to do anti-racism work, as it gives us all some compassion about how hard it is while still not letting us off the hook.
Ijeoma Oluo's book, "So You Want to Talk About Race" is as cleanly written and edited as any book I've ever read. It also flows quite quickly. She often starts a chapter/topic with a personal anecdote. She is completely filled with compassion for white people trying to be anti-racist (her mother is white, and the conversation with her mother about race is both hilarious and possibly the spark for this book.)
I took a lot of notes in this one. There was a line on page 32 that was hard to look at, so I'll put this out there and process it a bit, because I think it was the hardest lift for me. She said, "The ultimate goal of racism was the profit and comfort of the white race, specifically, of rich white men." I am a rich white person and hearing this really causes some revulsion in me. How can I possibly profit from racism, I protest?!? But then I calm down and realize a few things: the slave trade, that shipment in 1619, truly WAS all about enriching white people. The structure they put into place was designed to keep them rich (return their lost property, etc) and then create a cheap labor force even after slavery was made illegal (see prison workers, sharecroppers, and the miserablely low minimum wage today.) The idea that some people are just meant to serve is crack cocaine for white people who want servants while also wanting to feel good about ourselves. Yeah, racism is about keeping white people on top.
If you can't sit with that, can't handle that discomfort, then go back to Robin Diangelo's White Fragility for a while and then come back to this, because Ijeoma Oluo keeps going. It doesn't actually get any harder than this, it's just that topics like this keep coming at us. For example, on page 64 she starts talking about how my advantage is someone else's disadvantage. I've always figured that social injustice could be cleared up and we'd all have the same privileges, that I wasn't LUCKY, she was just UNLUCKY so we cure that and she's lucky, too. But all too often there really IS an element of advantage. Every time black workers are NOT proportional in the workplace it's because some white person got a job when a black person didn't. (If racism weren't at play the levels of black and white workers would be proportional to the population. She trashes the concept that you can't find equally or better qualified black people for every job.)
Her conversation about cops on page 91 was really instructive. I've been able to hold "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" in my head at the same time. Dare I say, "all lives matter, so duh". But when you start to get the history, that police are there for the comfort of white people, that it starts to be clearer that there's a structural problem with policing that isn't going to be cured with some anti-bias training. It's why implicit bias in police forces is correlated with the racism of their local environment rather than with their own race or their exposure to anti-bias training. (Did you see that study? It said to cure racial bias in your police force, work on improving it in the entire community. It's a big ask, but it's a big problem that requires a big solution.)
The "school to prison pipeline" was something I had heard about but known nothing about. Same with the "model minority". Her final chapter on "Talking is great, but what else can I do?" is where I have landed for my junior year of this education. I'm going to ask my candidates for mayor what they plan to do about racial bias in the police force (a school resource officer arrested a black teen last year in a WTF moment.) I'm going to ask what they plan to do about the racial achievement gap in our schools. I'm going to ask my candidates what racial justice initiatives they are promoting.
I'm going out to the internet to hire vendors lately. I'm trying to seek out minority-owned or businesses employing a majority-minority for vendors when I can. I'm at least looking. I listen to Black Twitter (and fund at least one patreon, but am about to add another). I volunteer with "White Nonsense Roundup" from time to time. I've made "add a woman of color" to my women's social group as a priority for two years running, challenging everyone to seek out women who are not like us already to join. (We've managed to affirmatively seek a few lesbians, so wuhoo, it's diversity in terms of the 150 year old Iowa-born sorority, but we can do better.)
I'm on a D&I committee for my professional association and am doing a Diversity & Inclusion training for financial planners in November. This is a "see one do one teach one" sort of thing: each white person who takes on anti-racism work spreads it to another (or a few) and we, bit by bit, reach that tipping point that happened in my lifetime with regards to homophobia.
So, in conclusion, yeah, read this book. But perhaps read White Fragility first if you literally have NO anti-racism training at all under your belt. Because in this society, if you haven't actively worked to become anti-racist, I have bad news for you. You're racist the way fish are wet.
Image source: Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005) “Building a Multi-Ethnic, Inclusive & Antiracist Organization-Tools for Liberation Packet for Anti-Racist Activists, Allies, & Critical Thinkers”