A Reminder to Read Books that Make You Uncomfortable

Yes, conversations about race are awkward to hard and even hurtful and I’m not thrilled to be categorized as a white supremacist simply because I am white but even with all that discomfort, confusion, eyebrow raises, and slack jawed moments I experienced while listening I have to say my world feels bigger after reading this. My perspective is changed. I didn’t understand or even recognize my own racism or white privilege. I have not had to confront racism and I have not seen the part in it that I have played or know what action I could take to change. I am asking questions of myself and assumptions I’ve made about a range of other issues because if I didn’t see this, what else am I not seeing? I feel very blessed to have come across Oluo’s book and will continue to follow her work. I also feel compelled to share that the narration is top notch.

24 people found this helpful

Excellent book, excellently narrated.

Ijeoma Oluo has a gift for delivering hard medicine with humor and sensitivity. If you are a white person who wants to do better, this is a perfect primer on how (and when) to have conversations about race without doing more harm than good.

And Bahni Turpin is an impeccable narrator. She reads with a clarity and conviction that makes the content feel completely fresh, like a conversation, rather than a reading. A perfect fit with Ijeoma Oluo's writing style, too.

16 people found this helpful

great truths wish it had more facts

If you’re a white person, and you’re convinced you know what people of color experience in their daily lives as racism and harassment in the US, this might be the book for you, provided you’re open to experiences that are outside your wheelhouse.
This is not the “kind and gentle” discussion on racism. It can be at times abrasive, depending on your experiences and perspective, but nonetheless an important truth packed with some facts.
Things I liked: personal examples and there are so so many which I found both shocking and like “wtf white people?!”, the data, there’s a “here’s what you can do”, boundaries and no one should be on call 24/7 to talk to anyone about anything and especially about a subject that triggers them and/or they have to put armor on for, etc.
Things I didn’t like: I wish there was more data (education, incarceration, health care, sexual assault, passed over in jobs, debt, etc.) especially in the beginning of the book, some pacing issues for me, etc.
I didn’t entirely understand “tone policing”.
I’ve heard about the rude misguided standard-asking-speakers-to-speak-and-expecting-them-to-donate-their-time-and-travel-at-their-own-expense from some speakers/authors on Twitter. I’m sure it’s more women than men and thus more women of color too, who are almost expected to do speaking gigs for free. Again, it’s another, “Wtf.”
Per including more data, for example, I’m working on a book about sexual assault and in my research I came across this data:

“African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations."
Judging from known erroneous convictions, a prisoner serving time for sexual assault is three-and-a-half times as likely to be innocent if he is black than if he is white.”
In half of all sexual assault exonerations with eyewitness misidentifications, black men were convicted of raping white women,28 a racial combination that appears in less than 11% of sexual assaults in the United States.29 According to surveys of crime victims, about 70% of white sexual assault victims were attacked by white men and only about 13% by black men.30 But 57% of white-victim sexual assault exonerees are black (101/177), and 37% are white—which suggests that black defendants convicted of raping white women are about eight times more likely to be innocent than white men convicted of raping women of their own race.There are many possible explanations for this disturbing pattern, but the simplest is probably the most powerful: the perils of cross-racial identification. One of the oldest and most consistent findings of systematic studies of eyewitness identification is that white Americans are much more likely to mistake
one black person for another than to mistakenly identify members of their own race.3"
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf

Per data, specifically on health, I believe I read a highlight of an article on Twitter that black women have higher death rates in childbirth and heart attacks (I think it was heart attacks) because something like they're symptoms/complaints are more likely to be dismissed by the medical community. Here's what a simple google search found:

"Following decades of decline, maternal deaths began to rise in the United States around 1990—a significant departure from the world’s other affluent countries. By 2013, rates had more than doubled. The CDC now estimates that 700 to 900 new and expectant mothers die in the U.S. each year, and an additional 500,000 women experience life-threatening postpartum complications. More than half of these deaths and near deaths are from preventable causes, and a disproportionate number of the women suffering are black.
Put simply, for black women far more than for white women, giving birth can amount to a death sentence. African American women are three to four times more likely to die during or after delivery than are white women."
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/america-is-failing-its-black-mothers/

"A typical visit to the doctor for a black woman can be anything but. Stories earlier this month about Serena Williams’ horrifying medical ordeal and the high post-pregnancy mortality rates of black women show their medical concerns are often dismissed, ignored, or even chastised. Navigating the terrain of the medical world is hard enough—and even harder when the color of your skin can mean the difference between life and death, or receiving the right tests to diagnose what ails you in between. "
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvedxd/doctors-dont-always-believe-you-when-youre-a-black-woman

There was a book long ago, can’t recall the name, where the author said you shouldn’t waste your time (not sure if that’s how he phrased it) arguing with people who already have decided. He said, you want to spend your time and energy on the group of undecided, because he said (again paraphrasing), “no one ever changed their mind because of an argument or from being attacked for their beliefs.”

6 people found this helpful

An Important Must-Read, but Worse than Expected

I have mixed feelings about the book.
On the one hand, I believe it is a must-read for anyone in the U.S., and a highly recommended read for anyone outside the U.S.
At the very least, it will give you a good perspective into the racial tensions in the U.S. and a good understanding of how it is seen by the activists of the African American community. Many eye-opening examples and explanations.
On the other hand, the book is not particularly engaging. Justifiably, it is filled with rants and complaints. However, I felt the case could have been made more strongly with more statistics and references to more studies. The book felt like a rally speech, and less like a piece of scholarly work.
Still, highly recommend. It was a good use of my time.

4 people found this helpful

I'm really glad I took a chance on this book

If you could sum up So You Want to Talk About Race in three words, what would they be?

This book was insightful, challenging, and thoughtful.

Any additional comments?

I had never heard of the author before but I am so glad that I read this book because I do want to talk about race. It's a conversation that needs to keep going. In some places it's a conversation that hasn't even started.

9 people found this helpful

Must Read

Everything I hoped it would be and more, easy to understand chock full of numbered points of advice on various topics, personal anecdotes that connect to the larger picture and the inspiration to have these conversations and also take action.

If you’ve read and loved and learned from Ijeoma Oluo’s words online or in social media, you’ll recognize her same understanding of the complexity of these conversations (especially those that white people should be having with one another) and also her passion for social justice.

If you’re not familiar with her incredibly important work, and you’re willing to listen openly about racism from someone with much lived experience woven beautifully into a larger picture where we can all have an impact - positive, if we choose - I’d highly recommend this book.

This book covers many of the basics as a reminder so some but also encourages deeper reflection within ourselves. There are parts that feel necessarily squirmy, but it’s clear that she remains focused entirely on helping us all have better conversations about race and take better actions to change a system that isn’t fair.

If you’re not sure that’s the case about our system that still oppresses people but are open to listen, this book is a great place to do that, quietly away from some internet fight and with time to pause and consider.

Please read this.

16 people found this helpful

Read it twice in a row

And about to start the third. If you are concerned with systematic oppression of people of color, you must read this book. It is uncomfortable to discover that we are all perpetuating the white supremacist hierarchy, but brilliant social commentator Ijeoma Oluo provides concrete steps we can all take to dismantle it, with a message of accountability and hope.

11 people found this helpful

Entertaining and wise.

I was hesitant to this book because I am a biracial black woman in America and I wasn't sure this book was written for me or that I would have much to gain from it. Being mixed race often leaves you in the world of the 'other'. Often books on race are written to educate white people or vindicate poc. But this does that, but it expands into so much more than that. Everyone can be educated and maybe even find vindication in this guide to constructive conversation.

It was also nice that it felt as if Bahni Turpin really identified with and embodied the work. Thanks for the great read.

1 person found this helpful

Must read for white folks

I have done a lot of work on my privilege and racial bias (and I still have a LONG way to go) and books like this are so helpful, great reminders and calls to action, I will be rereading it again soon and asking all of my church staff to read it as well!

1 person found this helpful

best audio book yet

First the topic and writing is amazing. Whether or not you're interested in issues of race, the author describes in precise detail the workings of our white supremacy system in all our lives. Yes, there are a lot of specific pointers about having conversations around race whether you're white or of color. For me it was far more important in its description of workings of the system that I can't see from my position. most of all, she handles these loaded issues with a great deal of compassion and humor along with straight talk. The narrator is the best I've heard, as well. I've already given 2 copies if the book away...

1 person found this helpful