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A review by kevin_shepherd
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
5.0
I put off reading this book for quite some time, not because I was disinterested in the topic or afraid of what I might discover about myself. I put off reading this because the cover (which is god-awful btw) gave off a dull, generic vibe. Because this book looks so ‘common’ I had this idea in my head that it probably contained nothing new for me. I mean, I have two big shelves in my home library dedicated to “the black experience” - books about MLK and Malcolm, books by bell hooks and Dr Cornell West and Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes and Audre Lorde and Michelle Alexander and on and on and on… I thought this little book probably had nothing original to add to what I already thought I knew. I was wrong.
When I read in Ijeoma Oluo’s introduction that she lives in a “white supremacist country,” my first thought was something like, “oh, so she’s South African?” No. She lives in Seattle, Washington and she was born in Denton, Texas. (What!?) Okay, I had long ago freely acknowledged that white supremacy exists here. But to call America a white supremacist country was a paradigm shift I had to creep up on. I had to mull this over.
This book is FULL of moments like that. There are many sentences here where I had to stop and ask myself, is this true? There are epiphanies here that hit a little too close to home—hell, some of them landed in my goddamn living room. I’ll be honest, at times this book made me uncomfortable.
Epiphanies of this nature can be more than a little unsettling. To embrace a new conception, especially a new self-conception, we have to first release our death-grip on a misconception. Some of those misconceptions are there because they’re comforting. Some of those misconceptions are there because we don’t want to think about the alternatives.
There are quite a few dismissive reviews about this book. Most of those dismissive reviews are from white folks (like me) who felt hurt or insulted or disrespected. We have to stop and ask ourselves, why is this upsetting? I admit, there were times here when I read something that made me wince. Am I THAT guy? Is this really me? More than once, the unflattering answer to that question was yes.
If you’re a white person who knows all there is to know about what it’s like to be a person of color in America then don’t read this book. For the rest of us, I highly recommend we give the uncomfortable ideas here a lot of thought.
When I read in Ijeoma Oluo’s introduction that she lives in a “white supremacist country,” my first thought was something like, “oh, so she’s South African?” No. She lives in Seattle, Washington and she was born in Denton, Texas. (What!?) Okay, I had long ago freely acknowledged that white supremacy exists here. But to call America a white supremacist country was a paradigm shift I had to creep up on. I had to mull this over.
This book is FULL of moments like that. There are many sentences here where I had to stop and ask myself, is this true? There are epiphanies here that hit a little too close to home—hell, some of them landed in my goddamn living room. I’ll be honest, at times this book made me uncomfortable.
Epiphanies of this nature can be more than a little unsettling. To embrace a new conception, especially a new self-conception, we have to first release our death-grip on a misconception. Some of those misconceptions are there because they’re comforting. Some of those misconceptions are there because we don’t want to think about the alternatives.
There are quite a few dismissive reviews about this book. Most of those dismissive reviews are from white folks (like me) who felt hurt or insulted or disrespected. We have to stop and ask ourselves, why is this upsetting? I admit, there were times here when I read something that made me wince. Am I THAT guy? Is this really me? More than once, the unflattering answer to that question was yes.
If you’re a white person who knows all there is to know about what it’s like to be a person of color in America then don’t read this book. For the rest of us, I highly recommend we give the uncomfortable ideas here a lot of thought.