Hiranmaya

This past year has revealed the deepest cracks within our society, our leadership, and ourselves. The May 25^th brutal killing of George Floyd sparked an honest conversation between my friends and I, as I’m sure it did between most, about the state of racial injustice in our country. Upon reflection about how to contribute productively, meaningfully, to the conversation, to the movement—we decided we needed to educate ourselves, but more than that, we needed to learn how to talk about race.  

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo is one of the best books that I have ever read. It’s hard to say that without it sounding like a hyperbole, however, it’s true.

Oluo has written a book for everyone that simultaneously explains the nuances of racism that, if you are not a Black identifying person, you probably missed, and for everyone else, gives them the tools to respond calmly and rationally to even the most infuriating of comments. It’s beautifully written with metaphors that translate the most nebulous of concepts into understandable situations. Oluo’s writing is so poignant that it makes you sit there and repeat the phrases over and over in hopes of committing her words to memory.

One of my favorite professors once said that when someone says something inflammatory, “Don’t get angry, get informed. Learn and then come back ready to have a conversation.” That’s exactly what Oluo does. She has created a comprehensive conversation guide informed by her own experiences as a queer, black woman.

She sets up her book as singular chapters that seek to unpack and explain common buzzwords—intersectionality, microaggressions, gaslighting, etc.—or address commonly asked questions—“Why can’t I say the N word.” In doing this she not only presents the opposing argument that is used to justify racist statements, but also a what to say/ do guide on how to systematically and effectively refute all of these points. This allows for the reader to delineate their own beliefs to back up what they believe without simply resorting a moral argument, which almost always escalates tensions in real life conversations.

She starts by redefining our notion of what racism is. Oluo argues that it is not the act of one individual against a singular other individual, but instead centuries worth of acts built into a system of oppression. She describes being a POC in a white dominated society as “being in an abusive relationship with the world” where every day there is a new little hurt, a new little dehumanization.

It is this raw genuineness that I appreciate most about Oluo. She prefaces her book by saying that she wouldn’t try to lighten the topic, that that wasn’t the point, it wasn’t a subject meant to be palatable. You are supposed to sit with the discomfort and to reflect on your own part in creating that or allowing it to persist.

Writing this for Hiranmaya, where Meera and Aishwarya articulate their experience being Indian-American beautifully, I also got to thinking as to how my identity influenced by ability to parse, reflect, and digest a book about race. I found that although she speaks mostly to the black experience, Oluo does a great job in creating solidarity among people of color reinforcing Dr. King’s message that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In particular, I found that the chapter on microaggressions in which she presents a list of questions commonly asked to POC resonated with me, bringing me back to people asking for nickname that was easier to pronounce, making me into a version that fit better into their world, than attempting to pronounce my name for what it was.

 Lastly, I just wanted to share a parting discovery that I had while reading the book. Something lingering that I contemplated while reading was the place of call out and cancel culture within the movement and how that intersected with education and forgiveness. I’m sure that many of us have seen fights on social media involving friends and old acquaintances that have lost their original purpose in the comments section. In various readings I have seen different things—that being actively anti-racist is a growing process and that that comes with growing pains which must be forgiven, but also that people must be called upon to be responsible for their actions. Oluo, I think, presented the best answer—you can evolve and you should, but you can never erase the hurt that you have caused. Ignorance as a result of your surroundings is understandable, but it is a privilege to have been that ignorant and that naivety doesn’t erase the hurt you caused.

I firmly believe that this is a book that everyone should read—either to understand how they are a contributor to a racist system, to understand their own privilege, or to simply be given the tools and vocabulary to contextualize and understand their own experiences.