Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in So You Want to Talk About Race, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Privilege, and White Supremacy
Confronting Racial Pain
Intersectionality, Oppression, and Social Justice
Cultural Appropriation
Summary
Analysis
Oluo discusses a work meeting in which she’s excited to meet her new team after a promotion. She’s the only black person there. She’s shocked when the director of her division, her boss's boss asks, “Is that your real hair?” and the whole team starts talking about “that Chris Rock movie about hair” and how damaging and expensive weaves are. This annoys Oluo—she doesn’t need a movie to inform her about the pains of using chemicals on black hair to make it less coarse, because she’s lived through it. Oluo feels like her boss is using her natural hair to shame other black women, meaning it’s still being used as a tool for oppression.
Oluo’s annoyance and frustration emphasize the emotional burden her boss puts on her by bringing up a triggering question in a professional environment. Her boss’s assumption that he knows what he’s talking about (just from watching a movie) also illustrates a much more subtle example of appropriation—he’s appropriating the experience of having black hair (as if he knows what it’s like and therefore has a right to comment on how to treat it).
Themes
Oluo says that most people know a lot about white hair styles—the cuts, products, and fashions are everywhere in the culture. But non-black people often know very little about black hairstyling methods, so they’re curious, and they want to touch it. Many people—in shops, restaurants, and work meetings—touch Oluo’s hair without permission, which is not okay. Apart from the fact that it’s never okay to touch somebody without permission, she thinks it’s weird that they want to. People’s hands are dirty, it messes up curls, and ultimately, it continues a history of not respecting the freedom and autonomy of black people and their bodies.
In a nod to the topic of cultural appropriation, Oluo explains what a society with a dominant culture looks like: one culture’s way of doing things (here, managing and styling hair) tends to take central stage, while other ways of doing things are pushed to the margins. It may seem harmless—or even progressive—to have curiosity about marginalized communities and their practices, but for Oluo, commenting on black people’s bodies is very triggering and emotionally fraught.
Themes
Oluo explains that since slavery, black Americans’ bodies have been treated as tools, curiosities, property, and sources of judgement and shame. Black people had to make their bodies resemble white people’s bodies to earn respect. Light-skinned privilege and chemical hair-straightening come from trying make black people look less black. Oluo says black people still live in a country where their hair can affect perceptions about their intelligence and their job prospects. Natural hair is often seen as “ugly” or “ghetto.” Oluo says that even if you’re curious about black hair, you shouldn’t try to touch it. Instead, question why black hair products are segregated in stores and why black hair tutorials are excluded from mainstream magazines.
Oluo explains that discussing something that seems innocuous—like hair—is actually very harmful when it reminds people of their historical oppression. It invokes the emotional trauma of a history in which black people didn’t have control over their bodies. As before, Oluo argues that the best way to learn about other cultures isn’t to place more strain on people who are oppressed, but to demand a change in the system so that marginalized cultures get more representation. This also helps to mitigate the harmful effects of cultural appropriation that Oluo discussed in the previous chapter.
Themes
