Ijeoma Oluo’s title communicates a resigned yet disquieted tone that carries through her surefooted book. She is reluctant to expose her pain to an audience that she has no reason to trust. She certainly doesn’t want to be forced to justify or explain her feelings to those who offers her little understanding in return.

As such, the quality of Oluo’s writing successfully mirrors the pain of racism and the systemic dynamics of white supremacy that comprise the content of the book. In music, this is called “prosody” – the sonic delivery system mirrors the intellectual content. A sweet, sugary song pairs with sweet sugary lyrics. Or, in this case, Oluo makes clear the burden of having to communicate the burden of having to live under assaultive structures.

On content, Oluo offers a great primer on the current state of racial conversations, especially as reflected online – “racial dialog 101”. If the reader is a white person (as I am), and unaware of or alienated by terms like “white privilege”, “cultural appropriation”, “tone policing” or “microaggressions”, this is, dare I say, one of the most complete, up-to-date and gentle books to use as the reader grapples with those terms. Her definitions of these oft-discussed but inherently complex terms are diamonds of precision.

She is exceptionally adept at parsing the divisive (but valid) idea that white people act in a racist way, even if they do not believe themselves to be racist, with passages such as:

“You are racist because you were born and bred in a racist, white supremacist society. White Supremacy is, as I’ve said earlier, insidious by design. The racism required to uphold White Supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. There is no way you can inherit white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments and not be racist.”

Or

“If you live in this system of white supremacy, you are either fighting the system of you are complicit. There is no neutrality to be had towards systems of injustice, it is not something you can just opt out of.”

As a baseline for understanding the “ley lines” of racial conversations, especially online, the book is an unqualified success. It catapults readers far past the basics. For white people still trying to formulate personal positions on issues like racialized police brutality, affirmative action, over-incarceration/school to prison pipeline and if it is “fair” for white people to say “the N word”, Oluo offers chapters upon chapters, full of stats, ready-to-pull quotes and illustrative personal incidents to help readers frame any thorny thoughts on these hot topics. I suspect most people, no matter their color, won’t need the extra verbiage on some of these issues, but if a reader is at a loss as to how to approach a problematic family member, Oluo’s more gentle hand-holding through “racial dialog 101” may prove to be the perfect re-framing.

In many ways, this book is a refined and somewhat more circumspect version of Oluo’s valuable and important social media presence. She is worth following, as her in-the-moment reactions have tremendous value.

With Oluo winning on content, my thoughts turn to style. Oluo carefully (no doubt draft after draft of editing) modulates between a gentle, encouraging, explanatory tone, almost like an elementary school teacher, and a tone of clear-eyed condemnation and righteous fury. The book speeds by, but the deliberate tonal shifts take white readers on a journey. She compels readers to confront her pain, then turns to a less visceral but equally important examination of the structures. The visceral writing generates the emotional commitment to examine the important societal and interpersonal processes that cause this pain.

She is transparent about her conflicted feelings concerning the need to write about her own inner pain in the pursuit of “convincing” white people that racism is real and that her own white readers are part of the problem (but, hopefully, if the book is effective, part of becoming part of the solution).

These misgivings feel like a secondary narrative above the informative content of the book. This is an exploration of the same argument that arises whenever a video of police killing an African-American motorist surfaces. The argument is as follows: Does this display of black pain actually communicate the “different realities” in a way that will actually affect and motivate white people? Or will it merely traumatize those who already know this is the way America works and then merely amplify the bitterness when the system does what the system does?

Oluo’s naked struggles with the personal toll of engaging with a potentially hostile caucasian public challenges white readers with a broad question – “are you worth it?” Unlike chapters on intersectionality or the assured, explanatory “is it really about race?” chapter, this lingering question isn’t the rhetorical device of a master of racial epistemology, but a bleeding, urgent, trauma-infused question of existential importance. The hope and fear that permeate the question infuses the book (or at least my experience of it). Chapters about the fumbling, reactionary inappropriateness of her own white mother, instances of gaslighting she endured at the hands of white friends about her own experiences and, generously, her own admission to failures to quickly catch her own lapses into classism brought the thorny complexities of the main question to heart-wrenching light. Are these conversations fruitful or just harming to those already harmed? As the conclusion drives home, there is no easy answer. Only time will tell.

Note: Since I originally wrote this review, this book has been released in paperback, while Oluo was also targeted with threats, forcing her to move her family from their home for a time for their own protection. As such, the emotions of this book remain sadly as current as ever.

Major Takeaways:

Frankly, the whole book is a “major take away”, but I feel that a few topics are covered with unique efficacy here:

Best definition of racism I’ve encountered:

“A Prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are re-enforced by systems of power”.

A great, user-friendly framing of cultural appropriation:

“The problem of cultural appropriation is primarily linked to the power imbalance between the culture doing the appropriating and the culture being appropriated. That power imbalance allows the culture being appropriated to be distorted and redefined by the dominant culture and siphons any material or financial benefit of that piece of culture away to the dominant culture, while marginalized cultures are still persecuted for living in that culture.”

Easy-to-grasp rebuttals for:

“I don’t have any privilege”

“When somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing and may in fact be contributing to those struggles.”

“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.”

“I don’t have a racist bone in my body”

“It’s the system, and our complacency in that system, that gives racism its power, not individual intent.”

“If you live in this system of white supremacy, you are either fighting the system of you are complicit. There is no neutrality to be had towards systems of injustice, it is not something you can just opt out of.”

“You are racist because you were born and bred in a racist, white supremacist society. White Supremacy is, as I’ve said earlier, insidious by design. The racism required to uphold White Supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. There is no way you can inherit white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments and not be racist.”

“Why is it always about race?”

“1. It is about race if a person of color thinks it is about race. 2. It is about race if it disproportionately or differently affects people of color. 3. It is about race if it fits into a broader pattern of events that disproportionately or differently affect people of color.”

“…just because something is about race, doesn’t mean it’s only about race. This also means that just because something is about race, doesn’t mean that white people can’t be similarly impacted by it and it doesn’t mean that the experience of white people negatively impacted is invalidated by acknowledging that people of color are disproportionately impacted. Disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantages facing people of color…”

Oluo delves into deciphering the psychological appeal of racism, even for poor (and otherwise marginalized) whites.

“This promise – that you will get more because they exist to get less – is woven throughout our entire society. Our politics, our education system, our infrastructure – anywhere there is a finite amount of power, influence, visibility, wealth, or opportunity. Anywhere in which someone might miss out. There the lure of that promise sustains racism.”

“White Supremacy is this nation’s oldest pyramid scheme. Even those who have lost everything to the scheme are still hanging in there, waiting for their turn to cash out.”

Lastly, Oluo gives white people some constructive plans of action, powerfully, inspired by her own mother (who is white):

“My mom has shifted her focus on race from proving to black people that she is “down” to pressuring fellow white people to do better.”

This resonated to me as particularly important, as I have seen white people, in a desperate rush to demonstrate their rejection of racist systems, invade African-American spaces, taking up room, derailing conversations – generally creating problems for those they’d seek to help, while doing nothing constructive to end the systems that keep racism alive.

The more welcome course is to stay in racist spaces and make noise there – go to Thanksgiving, argue with your racist uncle. Fight against racist local politicians and their policies, racist school curriculums, problematic local police, prosecutors and jailers. Vote with your dollars – use your buying power in a manner consistent with your values.

Lastly, use this book as the title suggests – as a tool to start difficult conversations with people in your life who may not be open to the thoughts within, but are aware enough of the issues to at least engage the topic.