So You Want to Talk About Race Main Ideas

Racism

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo explains race and racism in ways that are meant to help people—both white people and people of color—have discussions about race that can contribute to ending the harms of racism. She begins by defining racism as “any prejudice against someone because of their race, when those views are reinforced by systems of power.” This definition is important because it places the focus on how racism is upheld by systems that have been built to preserve the power of those who already have it at the expense of those who don’t. That is, racism is not just a bias against someone because of their race but that same bias encoded into all of the systems of a society with the goal of keeping oppressed and marginalized people from obtaining any power. 

When racism is viewed in this way, two important things happen. First, discussions about racism can focus on systemic racism—how racism is inherent in systems that perpetuate its harms in society—and this focus is far more practical if the goal is to reduce the harms of racism. Racism’s harms don’t show up as hurt feelings because someone doesn’t like another person, Oluo suggests. Racism’s harms show up in society in numbers of Black men incarcerated or shot by police, in entrenched poverty, and in debilitating psychological distress. Second, a focus on systemic racism, rather than on individual racists, presents a truer picture of the United States and its history. The country wasn’t built on the racial prejudice of certain individuals; it was built on human enslavement. Although individuals held racial biases that made human enslavement palatable to them, the system was also an economic and political one. Oluo argues that readers need to see the whole system and the connections that tie it together if they are to make real change for the better.

Intersectionality

Ijeoma Oluo’s main focus in So You Want to Talk About Race is racism, but this focus is primarily meant to narrow the discussion to one topic for the sake of her overall goal—to help people have discussions about racism. Bringing class, sexuality, gender, or other marginalized identities into the discussion could derail it or even hide the specific harms of racial oppression. That being said, intersectionality is inextricable from discussions of race, because race intersects with other identities in any given person’s experience. Racial oppression looks different in the life of a Black woman than in the life of a Black man, and it looks different in the life of a queer Black woman than in the life of a queer Asian American woman. Because of this manifestation, taking an intersectional approach is crucial to social justice movements. Without it, people just don’t have a complete understanding of how racism manifests in real people’s lives, and they can’t be effective in making positive change if they don’t have a full understanding.

Oluo explains that the term intersectionality was first used by activist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 as a way to describe how racism and gender discrimination combine to harm Black women and other women of color in ways that are different from how racism harms men of color. Oluo also sees the evidence of intersectionality in her own life, as a queer Black woman. These are three identities that each carry a legacy of discrimination, yet they exist in one person, and so the combined effects of discrimination have to be taken as a whole. According to Oluo, intersectionality has become a large part of her everyday work fighting for social justice, and no social justice movement will be effective without an intersectional lens.

Words Matter

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo states, “Words are always at the heart of all our problems, and the beginning of all our solutions.” One of her approaches to finding solutions to racism is, after all, to write a book about having conversations about race. Talking about race can bring people closer to understanding its causes and effects and, as a result, closer to taking effective action to do better.

But Oluo makes it clear that using words in these discussions should be accompanied by refraining from using words that harm. Words have power. Some words carry within them the entire history of Black oppression in the United States, such as the “n-word,” which has its roots in enslavement and has been used throughout the nation’s history to demean and oppress Black people. Some words perpetuate negative stereotypes, and these stereotypes then become normalized and embedded in systems and institutions. For example, accusing a Black 5-year-old child who hits a teacher of assault rather than saying the child was misbehaving shows how words perpetuate the stereotype that Black boys and men are dangerous. This stereotype contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline. And some words are used to make people of color feel like they don’t belong or are in danger. These verbal microaggressions are also a way to exert power over a person, telling them they are “less than.” So words have power, and the way people use them matters. To do better, Oluo says, people must stop harming people with their words and instead use them to speak out for racial justice.