So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

A few months ago, I was at our neighborhood park with my kids and a dad came with his little daughter, who was the same size as Lucy. So naturally we struck up a conversation (as the only two adults at the park, with our girls playing with each other) and chatted about library story time and what it's like having three kids, etc. He was saying he wanted more opportunities for his daughter to socialize with other kids, since she didn't have any siblings, but they didn't want to pay for daycare yet. I was telling him about the Fun Club at the gym, and he said they lived right next to the gym. I asked if he lived in the apartment complex next to it, and he said, no, in a house in the neighborhood across the street.

And I felt awkward, and worried that he assumed that I thought he lived in an apartment because I assumed he was poor--because he was black. I was thinking about those apartments because they were where we had lived when we first moved here, and I was wanting to make a further connection with him by saying, "Oh, yeah, we lived there too!" But as soon as it came out of my mouth, I wasn't sure if it came across as a racially assumptive comment. This happened a few months ago, and obviously I am still thinking about it--this otherwise friendly and neighborly conversation with a very sweet dad about his daughter--and this book gave me some things to think about in terms of that conversation. One thing Oluo said is that if a person of color thinks something is about race, then it is--so if this dad that I was talking to thought that I was assuming he lived in an apartment because of his race, then it was about race, because of his prior experiences and treatment that may have conditioned him to notice those assumptions. I didn't mean anything by it myself, but that doesn't mean the conversation didn't feel like that for him.

Oluo does a great job of writing about racism in America and what the real problem is--the systemic oppression of people of color in our country. It's not about every time someone is mean to someone of a different race--it's the fact that people of color are systematically challenged in every way and are being oppressed in every fact of life throughout our country. And every one of us is participating in that system if we are not actively fighting against it. We white people are naturally racist, because that is how we have been raised to be. It doesn't mean that we hate people of color; it means that we have been trained to expect preferential treatment and privilege over other people of different races, even if we are uncomfortable with it when we notice it.

I thought a lot about JJ while reading this book and reading about Oluo's experiences as a person of color growing up in a highly white area. JJ was the token black kid in my grade at my high school--there were maybe two or three others, but JJ was the popular one, and the one who I knew in several of my classes. I distinctly remember someone saying, "Yeah, but JJ isn't really black. He acts like he's from the hood but he lives in a super nice house and is totally rich." Like it was his job to be really black for all the rest of us white kids in Irvine. I am pretty sure I bought into that thought process about JJ at 16, though, and I wonder if it was ever hard or weird for JJ at our high school. Or, I guess I should say, I wonder when it was ever hard or weird for him. I hope it was never me that made it hard.

I want to say that I'm pretty aware of avoiding racist comments and micro-agressions. Oluo lists out a bunch of examples of micro-agressions in one of her chapters, and I feel pretty confident that I would never say any of those things to someone of a different race. I also feel pretty conscious about trying to treat people of different races the same as I would someone of my own race. But I feel conscious about it, meaning that I think about it and am deliberately doing it, which means that I am maybe fighting against my natural tendencies in some ways.

And I definitely am realizing how complicit I am in the whole racist system in our country after listening to this book. I felt sick listening to Oluo's description of how black boys are treated in our schools (the school-to-prison pipeline chapter just is heart-wrenching) and imagining the cute kids at Dane's school being treated that way. I imagined black teenagers messing around the same way as white teenagers and realized with force how true it is that there are times when I or my siblings would probably have been arrested if we had been black. I never did anything against the law, but I remember thinking it was hilarious changing the wording on signs in front of motels when I was 17, and I had never thought about how differently a black kid would be treated if caught doing the same thing. I never expected to get into trouble for doing something like that. And that's not even to mention the horror of black kids and men being shot by police--which IS something I have been aware of and sick about before reading this book, but it is something that I can let slide to the back of my mind because it's not my kids that I have to worry about. That is not okay. I want to do more and do better. I want to make sure that the cute kindergarteners at Dane's school stay safe--I think they are; I think Dane's school does a decent job about treating children of color the same, but I guess I only think that because I've assumed they are. I want to help our community become more inclusive. And that's one reason why I've been so grateful that Dane is going to the school that he is--it's a very diverse school, with lots of different races and groups of kids represented, and I want to have him think it's normal to be friends with kids of all colors. I know our country is not the magical melting pot that we learned it was in elementary school (like Oluo describes), but I want to think it can be better for our kids. But that starts with us.

I don't even know how to write about this book without making it all about me. (Obviously I have, since all of the paragraphs so far have been about me.) Oluo is very clear that discussions about race are not about me (the white person). But this book was meant to be introspective and get the reader thinking about where they can and should improve in their discussions and relations with people of other races, so I guess this is a good thing. It was so thought-provoking and definitely was good for me.