So You Want to Talk About Race

Racial injustice is a running thread through Oluo’s book. Chapter 11 focuses on the lack of respect for the bodily autonomy of Black people through unwanted touching, while Chapter 12 addresses the small aggressions Black people face in their daily lives. The two discussions unambiguously identify people of color as victims of racial injustice. By contrast, Chapter 9 touches on a different kind of injustice—one that superficially targets White people. Oluo argues that White people should not use racialized language—in particular, the n-word—but that the same does not hold for Black people. Some members of the Black community, notably rappers, use the word as a way of reclaiming a term of oppression, but even well-meaning White people cannot do so without conjuring the word’s painful history. So long as the effects of that history continue to be felt, the word should remain taboo for them. Oluo concedes that some might see this as an example of injustice against White people, but she maintains the situation is fair:

It is completely fair that a word used to help create and maintain the oppression of others for your benefit would not be able to be used by you without invoking that oppression, while people of color who had never had the power to oppress with those words would be able to use them without invoking that same oppression. The real unfairness lies in the oppression and inequality that these words helped create and maintain […] The fact that people of color can say words that white people can’t is an example of injustice—but it’s not injustice against white people (141).

Like the use of the n-word, charges of cultural appropriation are sometimes viewed as unfairly targeting White people. In Chapter 10, Oluo discusses the well-known example of rap, a musical genre with roots in the slave trade that counts White rappers among its best-paid and most lauded performers. It is true that White people are sometimes castigated for borrowing elements from other cultures, while the reverse does not hold. Oluo makes the case that the difference lies in imbalances of power, which allow dominant cultures to cherry-pick and profit from oppressed cultures while simultaneously marginalizing the people living in those cultures. Although it may not seem fair that people of color can borrow from White culture without being labeled appropriative, systemic discrimination complicates the issue:

[W]hat actually is not fair, is the expectation that a dominant culture can just take and enjoy and profit from the beauty and art and creation of an oppressed culture, without taking on any of the pain and oppression people of that culture had to survive while creating it (151).

There is nothing legally barring White people from rapping or from using the n-word. As Oluo points out, however, can and should are two entirely different matters. Not harming or offending people of color is a prerequisite for allyship. So long as all cultures are not equally respected, appropriation risks being exploitative and insulting.  

Bodily autonomy is among the most important topics in Oluo’s book. The issue comes to the fore in Chapter 11, which problematizes the management and unwanted touching of Black hair. Ownership over Black bodies cannot be divorced from the history of the US—specifically, the transatlantic slave trade, which transported enslaved Africans to the Americas through physical and psychological violence, primarily for forced labor. Slaves were, by definition, the property of slave owners. They could not act with self-determination or sovereignty. In other words, they lacked bodily autonomy. Current attempts to manage Black people’s hair under the guise of school dress codes and professional standards are powerful reminders of historic controls White people exercised over Black bodies.

Oluo also addresses more insidious forms of bodily control—notably, those stemming from a lack of representation in television, film, print, and other media. She describes using powerful chemicals to straighten her hair as a child to emulate the “beautiful” girls she saw in magazines. No amount of straightener, however, could give her hair the appearance and texture of a White person’s. As Oluo points out, self-esteem suffers in the face of unattainable beauty standards, as do career prospects: “We still live in a country where our hair determines how professional we seem, how respectable we seem—even how intelligent we seem. Our hair is used to help determine our place in a white supremacist society” (160).

Throughout her book, Oluo describes concepts some readers may find new or difficult to grasp. Microaggressions—the subject of Chapter 12—are among the most challenging to address because they are hard to see. Even when microaggressions are seen, they are often dismissed as minor and unintentional and thus not worth mentioning. As Oluo points out, few people go through life actively looking for small ways to insult minorities. However, lack of intent does not make microaggressions less hurtful. Because relatively few people call out microaggressions, victims often assume they are being overly sensitive, leading them to dismiss the incidents as jokes, or worse, figments of their imagination.

Small as they are, microaggressions are not mere annoyances. Cumulatively, they are unpredictable reminders of a person of color’s low position within existing power structures. In addition to causing psychological problems, such as hypervigilance, anxiety, and depression, microaggressions remind people of color that they do not belong, that they are “less than,” and that they are unworthy of the respect afforded to White people. They also keep people of color off kilter and place them on the defensive. More important, they normalize racism by making racist behavior part of everyday life. Microaggressions uphold the system of White Supremacy by dehumanizing people of color. The lack of empathy for Black people makes it easier to accept this unequal system. As Oluo argues, when it comes to racial oppression, little things amount to a lot.