So You Want to Talk About Race
Most damagingly, tone policing places prerequisites on being heard and being helped.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
the standards put forth by white supremacist patriarchy, and you are lucky, you will most likely just barely get by. There’s nothing inspirational about that.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
When somebody asks you to “check your privilege” they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing and may in fact be contributing to those struggles.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
individual intent.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Our police forces were born from Night Patrols, who had the principal task of controlling black and Native American populations in New England, and Slave Patrols, who had the principal task of catching escaped black slaves and sending them back to slave masters.8
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
The art form that black Americans have relied upon for generations is no longer theirs.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
That power imbalance allows the culture being appropriated to be distorted and redefined by the dominant culture and siphons any material or financial benefit of that piece of culture away to the dominant culture, while marginalized cultures are still persecuted for living in that culture.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Who writes the books and articles I’m using to help inform my opinions?
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
The truth is, you don’t even have to “be racist” to be a part of the racist system.