So You Want to Talk about Race by ljeoma Oluo

If you are a white person and think or know that you do not harbor any unconscious racism, this is a book for you. It is for me. I approached it fairly confident that nothing in it would surprise me. Reading it surprised me.

ljeoma Oluo, the daughter of a Nigerian man and a white woman from Kansas, lives in Seattle, earns her living blogging and writing about race, and received a bachelor's degree in political science from Western Washington University in 2008. She writes about race in our society beautifully and without rancor, while telling us that she is angry.

The title of each chapter is a question to which she responds. Some samples: Is it really about race? What is racism? Is police brutality really about race? Why can't I say the "N" word? Why can't I touch your hair? But what if I hate Al Sharpton? And at last, Talking is great, but what else can I do?

One of Oluo's compelling and revealing stories is about the time her white mother, with whom she has a loving relationship, announced that she wanted to talk about race. ljeoma wanted to avoid that conversation because she loves her mother, did not want to hurt her, and would need to point out the inescapable distance between them because ljeoma is black and her mother is white-and no matter how close they are, their life experiences separate them. Her mother, she knows, has never been followed around a store to guard against her shoplifting something, has never been stopped by traffic police for no apparent reason, has never been subjected to the daily microaggressions that are common fare for ljeoma.

I have two reservations about the book: ljeoma is apparently deaf to the violence and misogyny that I hear in rap music. And an unbiased friend said, after reading the book, "She leaves me no way to do the right thing." Even so, read the book. her answers to the questions she poses are closely reasoned, calmly expressed, based in experience and research. She knows whereof she writes. I strongly recommend this fine book.