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A review by thewildnorry
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
5.0
I put off reading this book. As much as I advocate for students and friends alike to Do the Work, when it comes to digging in myself. First off, I lied to myself and said that because I work in Wilmington with kids who are primarily black and Hispanic, I already “get it” more than others do. Not only that, but I've read other anti-racist works before and took multiple college classes that trained me to not be That White Person.
But when it came right down to it, I didn’t want to read it because I was scared. I didn’t want to be confronted by the things I’ve done, and I don’t want to disagree with a point the author makes and wrestle with whether or not I really am racist.
If you have similar feelings to me when it comes to reading books that are supposed to help us get a better grip on how racism operates in society and what we can do to stop this, I HIGHLY recommend this book.
It's educational and challenging without bordering on preachy. It includes in depth and highly sourced answers to many "I don't want to get yelled at for asking this question" questions. (HIGHLY recommend the Kindle book as you can easily click to the sources right in the book!) But perhaps the best part for me was that it includes so many actionable steps and a discussion guide in the back to help put this book into practice.
Also, I highly recommend reading this in tandem with Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates which takes a more personal and emotional look at what it’s like to live in a world built to shut you out at best and kill you at worst. (After all it’s written as a letter from Coates to his son.)
But when it came right down to it, I didn’t want to read it because I was scared. I didn’t want to be confronted by the things I’ve done, and I don’t want to disagree with a point the author makes and wrestle with whether or not I really am racist.
If you have similar feelings to me when it comes to reading books that are supposed to help us get a better grip on how racism operates in society and what we can do to stop this, I HIGHLY recommend this book.
It's educational and challenging without bordering on preachy. It includes in depth and highly sourced answers to many "I don't want to get yelled at for asking this question" questions. (HIGHLY recommend the Kindle book as you can easily click to the sources right in the book!) But perhaps the best part for me was that it includes so many actionable steps and a discussion guide in the back to help put this book into practice.
Also, I highly recommend reading this in tandem with Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates which takes a more personal and emotional look at what it’s like to live in a world built to shut you out at best and kill you at worst. (After all it’s written as a letter from Coates to his son.)