How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend? Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it’s hard to know where to start. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. Oluo’s book answers questions many Americans have about race but are too scared to ask while touching on key aspects of racism.In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America The book closes with chapters about how to confront one’s own racism and specific actions to combat systemic racism. In Chapter 9, Oluo explains why it is never appropriate for White people to use the “n” word, while Chapters 10-15 focus on the problems of cultural appropriation, bodily autonomy, microaggressions, youth activism, the myth of the model minority, and the stereotype of the angry Black person, as embodied in Al Sharpton. Chapters 4-8 address the issues of White privilege, intersectionality, police brutality, affirmative action, and the school to prison pipeline. Chapter 3 shifts the emphasis to the fears associated with discussing race, pitfalls to avoid, and strategies for having productive conversations.
In Chapter 2, Oluo defines racism as prejudices reinforced by systems of power and defends her broad use of the term, refusing to reserve it for extreme examples, such as Nazis, cross burnings, and lynchings. Chapter 1 pushes back against attempts to sidestep discussions of race by stressing class. The Introduction consists of Oluo’s recollections of growing up in a racially marked body, which led to microaggressions, on one hand, and celebrations of Black culture, on the other.
0 kommentar(er)
