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 recalls a conversation with her eight-year-old son. Oluo’s son is nervous because he doesn’t want to say the pledge of allegiance in school, and his teacher threatened to call him out for it if he doesn’t. He decided a few months ago that he’s an atheist (so he doesn’t want to pledge under God), doesn’t like pledging to countries (because it encourages war), and feels like the country doesn’t treat people like him well. Oluo also remembers her son being upset that his white stepbrother could play outside with a toy gun after Tamir Rice was shot, but he couldn’t.
Oluo continues addressing the emotional impact of living in a racist society, though her focus shifts more explicitly to feelings of anger. Oluo’s conversation with her son exposes further intersectional components to consider—it highlights how someone’s age or generation can affect the way they respond to racial discrimination. Oluo reacts to Tamir Rice’s death with some anger but more so with fear for her son, while her son responds primarily with anger.
Themes
Oluo was born in 1980 and grew up with the promise that racism was outdated and that it didn’t prevent you from going to Yale. But the promise didn’t live up to the realities of the 1990s and 2000s, including the crack epidemic, militarization of the police force, and mass incarceration. Her children’s generation feels the full force of how bad things are. They know that no matter how well they do as individuals, there’s still the system: it kills and imprisons them, it stops them from getting homes and loans, and it forces them to learn a white supremacist curriculum. They feel like things can’t get worse for them, so they might as well fight back.
Oluo expands on how a person’s age or generation affects their response to racism. Oluo’s childhood was filled with more optimism about the possibilities for black Americans in U.S. society, but her son is growing up in a time where the systemic forces of racism—and its damaging effects—are much more visible. Oluo thinks that this emboldens today’s youths to express their anger rather than stifle it out of fear. Oluo also subtly implies that if black youths seem inherently angrier than other children in schools it’s not because they’re born that way—it’s because they have good reasons to be angry.
Themes
Oluo thinks today’s kids are fighting for more justice than she could have ever imagined possible in her own youth. Their generation find adult debates about gay marriage, immigration, and transgender bathroom rights outdated: they’ve socially accepted many of the practices that adults resist. They march against Donald Trump without fear, and they’re not afraid to ask for things like trigger warnings, non-ableist language, and inclusive events. Oluo says it’s inevitable that everything adults say and do in the pursuit of justice will one day be outdated, and it’s her job to support her kids take the path that they think is right. Oluo says that as a generation, it’s our job to support the next generation, not to control them.
Once again, Oluo reminds the reader that the fight for social justice is intersectional—it entails battling all oppressive tendencies of a society, whether they discriminate on the basis of race or something else (like gender, nationality, or ability). Oluo is encouraged by the shift from fear to anger among young people in the U.S. today, she suggests that this anger should not be stifled or feared. Rather, it supported, since it’s directed at the right target: the system and the people at the top of the hierarchy who control it.
Themes
