[NOTE: This is part of a 1400-word review that I hope to get published at an online publication. I will share the full link if/when it is published.]

. . . With this book, Ijeoma Oluo gives us — both white people and people of color — that language to engage in clear, constructive, and confident dialogue with each other about how to deal with racial prejudices and biases. And this dialogue is critical. As she writes toward the end: “Words are always at the heart of all our problems, and the beginning of all our solutions.”

Let me say at the outset: this book is for everyone — white or black or any color in between. If you are white, it will make you see nuances of racism that you were probably not aware of, including within yourself, your loved ones, and coworkers. If you are a person of color, it will give you ways to respond calmly, rationally, and intelligently, even when dealing with the well-meaning “I’m not racist” white friend or coworker.

Each chapter is framed as a question which Oluo unpacks thoroughly and rationally. These are questions that typically come up in daily interactions, whether they are raised explicitly, implicitly, or only in our heads. And, since the last US election, they have also been popping up all across social media, over dinner-tables, and even in workplaces. Some of the questions seek to define loaded words/phrases and their implications: racism, intersectionality, police brutality, privilege, affirmative action, cultural appropriation, microaggressions, and so on. Some of them address the constant arguments you might come across on social media, like “why can’t I say the “N” word?” and “I just got called racist, what do I do?”

With each question, Oluo is consistent in her approach of first explaining why it matters, debunking some of the common beliefs/misunderstandings around it, describing its symptoms and impacts with facts and data, explaining why it needs to be discussed/addressed, instructing how to adjust one’s own frame of mind in approaching any related conversation, and providing practical checklists of what to say/do and remember/consider for an effective response.

Oluo’s primary underlying theme is that we are dealing with systemic racism built over centuries rather than individual acts of oppression. Throughout, she points out how this racism is built into all aspects of our culture, our institutions, our movements, and our everyday social behaviors and, more, importantly, how we can know for sure when something is about race. Whether we consider ourselves “racist” or not, we are part of a racist system. In fact, it is often our advantages that keep us from seeing the disadvantages of others. And, no matter how well-intentioned we might be as individuals, our complacency with that system makes us all complicit . . .

This book is largely for non-POC who wish to be allies or POC who are in denial of, not aware of or unfamiliar with the systemic racism prevalent in American society. Unlike many other scholarly works on race, this book uses language that is accessible and could even be used in an AP Language course. Actually, it would probably be a great addition to an AP Language course.

Most importantly, it needs to be read far and wide by teachers especially or anyone who works with POC.

Part memoir and part handbook, Ijeoma Oluo’s new book is not just about talking: it’s about action. Oluo addresses two distinct audiences: people of color and white people who hope to engage in dialogue about race. She makes it clear early on that her book is not some magic cure for white supremacy, but is instead a tool to open doors. Using chapter titles which focus in on key terms in the discussion about race in America (like tone-policing, the school-to-prison pipeline, and intersectionality), she creates an easy to engage with collection of short essays.

Each chapter balances some amount of personal experience with tips for both of her communities. For instance, in her chapter about about natural hair, she not only discusses stories where her personal space was invaded, she explains ways for white people to support black beauty without feeling the need to touch it. Every chapter reinforces the experiences of communities of color facing daily microaggressions while also giving questions to consider for how to improve dialogue.

I read Oluo’s book in less than twenty-four hours. Her direct prose will not apologize and doesn’t want your apologies either (at least if they are just empty words). The chapters are brief enough for a single sitting, or for later reference, but long enough to reflect fully on the topic at hand.

Readers hoping for hand-holding or reassurances that their good intentions are enough should look elsewhere. This book is for today. It recognizes that we all fail, that we are often blind to our privilege, and it suggests a path forward in the final chapter in real and tangible ways that move beyond performative allyship.

Pick up Oluo’s book if you’re looking for ways to steer conversation inside or outside of your racial community, engaging on the internet or in person.

(Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review)

Do you ever accidentally inhale a book? Like, you meant to read it with your eyes, but, whoops, suddenly there it is, lodged in your esophagus and now you have to go to the hospital and explain, in various gestures, how you breathed in an entire book? This happens to me more often than I would like to admit. So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo, is just the latest instance. Thankfully, this was an eARC from NetGalley (thanks Perseus Books) and not a physical volume—though I’m certainly going to need to buy one, or maybe two, when it comes out.

This book is the first in what will hopefully be an avalanche of books to plug an embarrassing hole in my ongoing education. I’m trying to ride the intersectionality train, but if I’m doing an honest accounting of things, I have not been doing a great job of reading books by Black women when it comes to issues like feminism and race. It has literally been a whole year since I read Roxane Gay’s amazing short story collection Difficult Women. More recently I did read Between the World and Me, and Coates obviously touches on some of the same issues that Oluo does here. But the two books are very different, both in terms of audience and purpose.

So You Want to Talk About Race is clear and upfront about what it is and what it is trying to do. Oluo is uncompromising (emphasis mine):

> So a good question to ask yourself right now is: why are you here? Did you pick up this book with the ultimate goal of getting people to be nicer to each other? Did you pick up this book with the goal of making more friends of different races? Or did you pick up this book with the goal of helping fight a system of oppression that is literally killing people of color? Because if you insist on holding to a definition of racism that reduces itself to “any time somebody is mean to somebody of a different race” then this is not the book to accomplish your goals.

Each chapter title is a question, the chapter being Oluo’s answer: “What if I talk about race wrong?”, “Why am I always being told to check my privilege”, “What is cultural appropriation?”, “What are microaggressions?”, “I just got called racist, what do I do now?”—there seventeen, so I won’t list them all here, but they are, every single one, fantastic. I could go on, chapter-by-chapter, for quite some length about all the wonderful parts of this book. Instead, I’ll highlight some of her explanation of cultural appropriation:

> Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that prefers its culture cloaked in whiteness. Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that only respects culture cloaked in whiteness. Without that—if all culture (even the culture that appropriators claim to love and appreciate) were equally desired and respected, then imitations of other cultures would look like just that—imitations. If all cultures were equally respected, then wearing a feathered headdress to Coachella would just seem like the distasteful decision to get trashed in sacred artifacts….
>
> … because we do not live in a society that equally respects all cultures, the people of marginalized cultures are still routinely discriminated against for the same cultural practices that white cultures are adopting and adapting for the benefit of white people.

I’ve had the cultural appropriation conversation with fellow white people before, and I’ve struggled to explain it sufficiently (the best I can do is link to this explainer from Everyday Feminism). Oluo’s chapter has helped me to realize that, often, I make the mistake of letting the conversation fall back into the unproductive territory of discussing specific examples (“well what about X, is X cultural appropriation?”) when (a) I can’t answer that because I’m not a member of that culture and (b) that’s not actually what cultural appropriation is about. Cultural appropriation, as Oluo explains here, is about the wider trends and power imbalances within our society. It’s why, to certain parts of white society, Macklemore is an artist while Tupac was a thug. But my conversations would often divert away from these crucial parts of the discussion, straying towards the more defensive territories (see Chapter 16: “I just got called racist, what do I do now?”).

This book is full of so many useful ideas, tips, and strategies—particularly for white people who want to be allies to racialized people. The aforementioned chapter 16 and chapter 4, which deals with privilege and “checking” it, are both essential reminders, even for someone like myself who has already been engaging with social justice for a while now. I’ve carefully avoided using the word “primer” to describe this book. It’s accurate, but I don’t want to pigeonhole it as some kind of introductory text. Certainly, if you are a newcomer to these issues, this book is accessible. But there is so much here for readers of every level of familiarity with the issues. If you are truly open to learning more about social justice and how to dismantle institutionalized racism, you are going to find useful ideas here, in plain language you’ll understand, and in a tone that helps you hear her frustration but also her intense empathy for humanity, and her hope for a better future (because you don’t write a book like this if you think dismantling racism is a lost cause). Oluo’s writing style never wavers from being confrontational and candid—she is not trying to appease anyone—but it’s also witty and incisive.

A few parts of this book get a little bit into specifics of American anti-Black racism, but by and large, almost all of the topics for discussion are relevant to a wider audience. As Oluo herself points out, Canada has its share of problems with racism. (A lot of it is directed much more vociferously towards Indigenous people—if you want momre information on that, check out Chelsea Vowel’s Indigenous Writes, or Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers, about the intersection of racism and violence in my own city of Thunder Bay. For writing on anti-Black racism in Canada, particularly state-sponsored racism like carding and brutality, I’ll point you towards Desmond Cole.) Moreover, Canada absorbs (whether we like it or not) much of its cultural fare from our neighbours down south, so even if policies like affirmative action or United States Supreme Court decisions don’t quite affect us in the same way, the attitudes seen in media and the language being used still does. I never felt like Oluo was losing me by spending too much time talking about American-specific concerns.

So I can make a few guarantees, here. First, if you read this, you’re going to learn something—hopefully lots of things. Oluo will crystallize notions that might already be forming in your head or introduce you to ideas and show you a new way entirely of looking at things. Second, if you read this, you will come away with a praxis for actually doing the work—it isn’t enough to read books like this and then pat yourself on the back for being “woke”. That’s what the final chapter is all about, and boy, are there ever some practical tips. That’s why I’m going to be buying a copy of this book since I received a review copy for free—because we need to pay Black women when they do the work of educating us.

So You Want to Talk About Race is everything I’d look for in a book on social justice issues. It’s informative, educational, and thought-provoking. It is topical in the post-Trump sense of the word. It hits that sweet spot of being academic and smart but also accessible—this is by far one of my favourite non-fiction books I’ve read all year, and probably the best I’ve received on NetGalley (Beyond Trans and The Radium Girls are close runners-up).

If you are at all interested in social justice, in dismantling racism, in making our world a better place, this is a must-read. Show up. Do the work.

So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

I loved this book. I finished it in a day simply devouring Oluo’s word. I can relate to so much of what Oluo was sharing and in so many ways it was validating but also depressing. I feel better knowing that I’m not the only person experiencing these microaggressions, working through these issues and surviving day to day but at the same time having these similar lived experiences makes me very well aware of how far we have to come in the U.S. when it comes to dealing with race, racism and equality.

So You Want To Talk About Race is a really well written, comprehensive look at the issue of race and how race relates to inequality, success, poverty, education and much more. When I took a look at the contents of the book I was blown away because I could recognize immediately that these topics were geared towards having a thorough conversation about race and not just placating people who want to feel like they are putting in the work. She included topics like intersectionality, privilege, affirmative action and addressed them head on, pointing out the arguments in each and encouraging readers to recognize and acknowledge where they stand on these different issues. I was hooked from the first page of the introduction. Oluo has a very straightforward writing style and she is extremely well grounded in herself and her voice. That assuredness allowed Oluo to expose herself and her personal experiences in ways that I could never imagine.

I hope this book speaks to you. I hope this book challenges you and makes you rethink your past experience. And that goes for every person regardless of race, gender, religion or anything in between. There were people that I had in mind while reading this book. Mostly people whose friendships I had to reevaluate in the last year because I realized how much of me they didn’t see and how much of my experience they didn’t recognize. Oluo’s book saw me and saw the struggle taking place right now. I am so thankful for this book and the effect that it could have on those willing to learn, willing to talk and willing to make a change when it comes to race.

Ijeoma Oluo has written a deeply insightful guide on how to discuss race and racism. It can be difficult to know where to start these conversations, but there are many concrete examples on how to begin dismantling systemic systems of racial oppression both on a individual interpersonal level and a larger scale. A phenomenal, timely book!

Fantastic look at race for anyone who wants to (or doesn’t want to) talk about race. Gives great thought points for people of all races when it comes to discussing race, but should be a must read for white people who consider themselves to be racially aware, but probably aren’t.

Ijeoma Oluo has surpassed expectations with this monumental masterpiece which deconstructs race with insight and clarity for all to better understand and address these issues!