Title: So You Want to Talk About Race
Author: Ijeoma Oluo
Pages: 242
“You are racist because you were born and bred in a racist, white supremacist society. 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.”
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo discusses seventeen different topics on race ranging from intersectionality to model minorities. She discusses her experiences with these topics and how they have shaped the way she, and others, live their lives. Oluo pushes you to have honest conversations with yourself about race and racism and how it is intertwined in every aspect of American life.
This book should be required reading for everyone, especially white people. Each chapter in this book focuses on a different topic from cultural appropriation, school-to-prison pipeline, and microaggressions. Oluo provides us not only with her personal experience with each of the topics, she also provides helpful steps to do better/ change.
“Racial oppression should always be an emotional topic to discuss. It should always be anger-inducing. As long as racism exists to ruin the lives of countless people of color, it should be something that upsets us. But it upsets us because it exists, not because we talk about it.”
This was both an easy read and a challenging one. Oluo’s writing style was extremely easy to read but she challenges you to think about your actions and how you have been racist. It’s not comfortable but it is important if you want to become a better person. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn about race, racism, and being a better person.
Red-Haired Ash Reads 