Summary
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America
Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it's hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race , Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life.
"Simply put: Ijeoma Oluo is a necessary voice and intellectual for these times, and any time, truth be told. " ― Phoebe Robinson , New York Times bestselling author of You Can't Touch My Hair
Author Notes
Ijeoma Oluo is a writer and speaker whose work on race has been featured in the New York Times. Washington Post. Elle, the Guardian, and more. She has twice been named to The Root 100 and received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award from the American Humanist Society.
Summary:
In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America. Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of Black Americans--has put a media spotlight on racism in our society. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend? In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life
School Library Journal Review
"You are going to screw this up royally. More than once," notes writer and editor Oluo in this slim but potent guide to discussing race. Nevertheless, she urges readers to push past their discomfort; to do otherwise is to accept a society entrenched in systemic racism. The author knows all too well the consequences of ignorance about race. A black queer woman, she not only experiences prejudice but also endures the additional burden of educating those who are skeptical about her oppression. Precise, poignant, and edifying, this primer gives readers much-needed tools, explaining academic concepts such as privilege and intersectionality, debunking harmful myths, and offering concrete ways to confront racism. Blending personal accounts and meticulously cited research, Oluo demonstrates how racism permeates every aspect of society, from education to the police force. She writes with empathy for her readers yet laudably refuses to let those who haven't grappled with their white privilege off the hook-"Don't force people to acknowledge your good intentions," she advises those who have inadvertently offended a person of color. VERDICT Profound yet deeply accessible, this is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand and combat institutional racism.-Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Oluo, an editor at large at the Establishment, assesses the racial landscape of contemporary America in thoughtful essays geared toward facilitating difficult conversations about race. Drawing on her perspective as a black woman raised by a white mother, she shows how race is so interwoven into America's social, political, and economic systems that it is hard for most people, even Oluo's well-intentioned mother, to see when they are being oblivious to racism. Oluo gives readers general advice for better dialogue, such as not getting defensive, stating their intentions, and staying on topic. She addresses a range of tough issues-police brutality, the n word, affirmative action, microaggressions-and offers ways to discuss them while acknowledging that they're a problem. For example, Oluo writes that the common phrase "check your privilege" is an ineffective weapon for winning an argument, as few people really understand the concept of privilege, which is integral to many of the issues of race in America. She concludes by urging people of all colors to fear unexamined racism, instead of fearing the person "who bring[s] that oppression to light." She's insightful and trenchant but not preachy, and her advice is valid. For some it may be eye-opening. It's a topical book in a time when racial tensions are on the rise. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Straight talk to blacks and whites about the realities of racism.In her feisty debut book, Oluo, essayist, blogger, and editor at large at the Establishment magazine, writes from the perspective of a black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman living in a "white supremacist country." The daughter of a white single mother, brought up in largely white Seattle, she sees race as "one of the most defining forces" in her life. Throughout the book, Oluo responds to questions that she has often been asked, and others that she wishes were asked, about racism "in our workplace, our government, our homes, and ourselves." "Is it really about race?" she is asked by whites who insist that class is a greater source of oppression. "Is police brutality really about race?" "What is cultural appropriation?" and "What is the model minority myth?" Her sharp, no-nonsense answers include talking points for both blacks and whites. She explains, for example, "when somebody asks you to check your privilege' they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you've had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing." She unpacks the complicated term "intersectionality": the idea that social justice must consider "a myriad of identitiesour gender, class, race, sexuality, and so much morethat inform our experiences in life." She asks whites to realize that when people of color talk about systemic racism, "they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you" and are asking that they be heard. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Action includes pressing for reform in schools, unions, and local governments; boycotting businesses that exploit people of color; contributing money to social justice organizations; and, most of all, voting for candidates who make "diversity, inclusion and racial justice a priority."A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE By Ijeoma Oluo. (Seal Press, $27.) Oluo takes on the thorniest questions surrounding race, from police brutality to who can use the "N" word. One chapter even has this intriguing heading: "I Just Got Called a Racist, What Do I Do Now?" angelitos By Han Stavans and Santiago Cohen. (Mad Creek Books, $17.95.) This graphic novel has a simple, gritty style. It tells the story of Padre Chinchachoma, a Catholic priest known on the streets of Mexico City as a protector of homeless children who raised the ire of the local police and was suspected of sexual abuse, culture as weapon By Nato Thompson. (Melville House, $24.99.) Thompson is an art curator and activist who has a problem with the way that corporations have co-opted the realm of culture to ensure profits, shape public opinion and control dissent, it occurs to me that i am america Edited by Jonathan Santlofer. (Touchstone, $30.) Timed to the first anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration, this collection packs in an impressive array of fiction writers and illustrators. The likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman assert their own visions for a democratic society. Nikolai Gogol By Vladimir Nabokov. (New Directions, $16.95.) In Nabokov's classic biography of the Russian novelist, newly reissued, he begins with Gogol's death and works back to his birth. Nabokov is particularly good at capturing the humorist in Gogol, a writer often misinterpreted as a kind of Russian Dickens. "When machines eventually think and feel, can we still own them? And if we can, is it then logical that we can enslave people too? A new novel by Annalee Newitz, autonomous, tracks the eventual collision of a mercenary, who is falling for his killer robot, and a murdering pharma-copyright pirate, who is falling for a rescued slave. Much of the book is taken up with a scary plot about drug copyright, which turns out to be about who owns our chemical brains. But the larger point about living in this world - life after 'the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property' - means it has become impossible to recognize the difference between coercion and freedom. It's normal to read about characters who are mystified about why they can't connect. It's much scarier to read about people who can't recognize that they're predators. Timely!" - CHOIRE SICHA, STYLES EDITOR, ON WHAT HE'S READING.
Library Journal Review
If you eschew potentially significant discomfort, then you're probably not ready to talk about race. Then again, denial is no longer an option: "These last few years, the rise of voices of color, coupled with the widespread dissemination of video proof of brutality and injustice against people of color, has brought the urgency of racism in America to the forefront of all our consciousness." With raw vulnerability, Oluo-whose mixed-race African American and Caucasian parentage has marked her with both insider and outsider status-confronts disparity, inequity, privilege, cultural appropriation, and more: "These are very scary times for those who are just now realizing how justifiably hurt, angry, and terrified so many people of color have been all along." Veteran narrator Bahni Turpin moves effortlessly between patient explication-"White supremacy is this nation's oldest pyramid scheme"-to painful realizations-"words [the 'n-word,' for example] have had a starring role in the brutalization of people of color"-to utter frustration-"I don't let people touch my hair." VERDICT Commingling sociopolitical history, personal memoir, and enlightening how-to lessons, Oluo's hybrid treatise deserves prominent shelf space alongside Ta-Nehesi Coates and -Roxane Gay. ["A timely and engaging book that offers an entry point and a hopeful approach toward more productive dialog around tough topics": LJ 12/17 starred review of the Seal hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
