So You Want to Talk About Race Read Online Free PDF Page A

stuff. You know, for Nazis and cross burnings and lynchings. You’re just going to turn people off if you use such inflammatory language.”
    I really
really
wanted this to just be a matter of misunderstanding. I really wanted this to be a case whereperhaps he just didn’t know how harmful everyday racism is, and once he did, he would change his mind. I tried to explain the real danger of unchecked racism and microaggressions to people of color. But he wasn’t going to hear it. There was “real racism” as he defined it, which was a post–reconstruction era horror type of racism, and there was whatever I was talking about (which he wasn’t comfortablecategorizing but he was pretty sure wasn’t that big of a deal)—the day-to-day reminders that I’m less than, that I should just learn to get over or find a more pleasant way to confront. He went on to discuss how his grandma, for example, said some racist things, but she was a kind person and it would be cruel to call a harmless old lady racist and would only make her more racist. It seemed farmore important to him that the white people who were spreading and upholding racism be spared the effects of being called racist, than sparing his black friend the effects of that racism.
    No matter what I said, no matter how I described the effects that this sort of racism had on me and other people of color, he was not going to accept me using the word “racist” to describe it.
    That was whenI learned that this was not a friend I could talk to about this really important part of my life. I couldn’t be my full self around him, and he would never truly have my back. He was not safe. I wasn’t angry, I was heartbroken.
    We couldn’t talk about the ways in which race and racism impacted my life, because he was unwilling to even acknowledge the racism that was impacting my life and he wasunable to prioritize my safety over his comfort—which meant that we couldn’t talk about me.
    P ROBABLY ONE OF THE MOST TELLING SIGNS THAT WE have problems talking about race in America is the fact that we can’t even agree on what the definition of racism actually is. Look at almost any discussion of race and racism online, and you’ll see an argument pop up over who is racist, who isn’t, and whohas the right to claim they are suffering from racism. The most common definitions of racism (in my own summation) are as follows: (1) Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race. Or (2) Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race, when those views are reinforced by systems of power. While these two definitions are very close to each other in many ways, the differencesbetween these two definitions of racism drastically change how you look at and address racism in America.
    For the purposes of this book, I’m going to use the second definition of racism: a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power. And this is a definition I recommend you use in your day-to-day life if your goal is to reduce the systemicharm done to people of color by racism in America. Let me explain why.
    When we use only the first definition of racism, as any prejudice against someone based on race, we inaccurately reduce issues of race in America to a battle for the hearts and minds of individual racists—instead of seeing racists, racist behaviors, and racial oppression as part of a larger system.
    There are a lot of individual,unapologetic racists out there. They’re easy to spot—they’re the people sharing the Obama = monkey memes. They are the people sewing swastikas to their jackets and talking about “White Genocide.” This book is not for them and they are not my primary concern. This book will not tell you how to get unabashed racists to love people of color. I’m not a magician. Furthermore, many of those peoplehave very little real power on their own and tend to stay on the fringes of society. We, as a society,