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So You Want to Talk About Race
Often, being a person of color in white-dominated society is like
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
But this is because their idea of blackness and the oppressions that black people face did not include black women and the specific oppressions we face from being both black and women.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantages facing people of color, just as brain cancer is not erased by talking about breast cancer. They are two different issues with two different treatments, and they require two different conversations.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Intersectionality forces people to interact with, listen to, and consider people they don’t usually interact with, listen to, or consider.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
Intersectionality is absolutely always important to all discussions of race and social justice; do not let other people bully you out of prioritizing it. It is important that our efforts to end oppression for some do not perpetuate oppression of others.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
At its core, police brutality is about power and corruption. Police brutality is about the intersection of fear and guns. Police brutality is about accountability. And the power and corruption that enable police brutality put all citizens, of every race, at risk. But it does not put us at risk equally, and the numbers bear that out.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
This becomes even stickier in social justice movements where you are targeting oppression. When you are supposed to be fighting the evils of “the man” you don’t want to realize that you’ve become “the man” within your own movement.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
We walk through the world with all our identities at once and therefore our day has an endless number of possible combinations of outcomes depending on how individual events and situations we encounter interact with our individual identities.