Ijeoma Oluo: So You Want to Talk About Race

We started our anti-racist book club with Ijeoma Oluo's "So You Want to Talk About Race."

This book is both accessible and blunt, so you need to be able to keep your defenses in check. Maybe that looks like only reading a chapter at a time, or maybe that looks like pausing here and there to check in with yourself.

What's most important is not giving in. Read and reread if you have to. Interrogate your defenses if you feel them rising, and if absolutely necessary, put the book down and take a breath or a walk.

But keep going. Keep reminding yourself the work is worth the discomfort.

Some highlights from our discussion that might kickstart your own thinking:

1. We started with a couple of us talking about growing up in fairly homogenous and white communities, and recalled some of the moments that really made us aware of race in a different way. For some of us, that came in earlier years, for others, like myself, a little later.

2. We discussed the idea brought out in Oluo's work and others that race is something constructed for the express purpose of uplifting some to the harm and oppression of others. We asked ourselves: If race has no real roots in reality, how can we dismantle what for many of us are a kind of "default setting?"

Tip: Trying engaging a more critical eye around what you read, the news you consume, the entertainment you enjoy, the conversations you have and overhear. You might be surprised by the number of ideas we indiscriminately accept about people.

How do you know what you know about people who are different from you? Who is giving you the information and are they fully free of any agendas? (Hint: probably not). Many of the differences we unconsciously assume about others are rooted in unchallenged assumptions that have no basis in reality or lived experience, and that's why so often people's opinions, thoughts and feelings are changed when they finally open themselves up to listening to and being in community with people.

3. We talked about how to have conversations about race with people who might not be as willing to really think about the harm racism perpetuates. These conversations sometimes feel urgent, but also vulnerable and loaded. How do we navigate those feelings for ourselves?

4. We encouraged one another to recognize that small steps are OK when it comes to both the conversations we have and with our own growth. As Oluo recognizes: Mistakes will happen, but you just have to keep doing the work.

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Some members of the book club shared these additional resources:

1. Great Migrations: A People on the Move

2. Black in Latin America, particularly the episode on Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

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Have thoughts you want to share? I'd love to hear from you.