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 the first time she was called a “nigger.” In her memory, she’s 11. Oluo and her brother Aham are staying with Liz (a friend of Oluo and Aham’s mother) while their mother is on a business trip. They get along well with Liz’s kids, Nick and Amy, and they mostly play in the woods. When Oluo and Aham go for a walk with Liz’s kids, some local children say “look at the niggers,” and Liz’s kids start laughing. Oluo says “the words hit like buckets of cold water.” They don’t want to get Nick and Amy in trouble, or worry their mother, so they say nothing, but the tension creates a bad atmosphere, and they feel unwelcome. Words, Oluo says, have power.
Oluo’s discussion of racial slurs like the n-word serves to emphasize the emotional cost of racism. She begins with a personal anecdote, emphasizing her shock (in the phrase “like buckets of cold water”) that exposes how painful, stressful, uncomfortable, and damaging it can be for people of color to unexpectedly endure racial slurs. She also uses her anecdote to show that people of color don’t always feel safe to call out situations that cause them racial pain, which is also a problem.
Themes
The word “nigger” comes from the Latin term “niger” (black), but it was used as a term to express hatred toward black people—especially by the Ku Klux Klan—since the 1700s. To Oluo, all oppression is rooted in language. Sometimes, she notes, the word “cracker” is used to reference white people, but to Oluo, it’s not the same: it doesn’t make people sick by evoking slavery, lynch mobs, “whites only” signs, and police dogs. Oluo says that people of color bear the pain of this history, while white people benefit from it.
Oluo explains that racial slurs connected with cruel oppressive practices like slavery and lynching carry a much stronger emotional punch because of the history associated with their use. This explains why some racial slurs are simply more hurtful than others—they not only invoke judgment but also an entire history of violence, abuse, and murder, which triggers profound racial pain.
Themes
Sometimes, words are reclaimed by the communities the words mean to oppress. Does this mean well-meaning white people should use them? It’s true that everybody has a right to free speech, and people of color have very little power to stop anyone using racial slurs, but to Oluo, it’s really about why anybody would want to trigger such pain. It might seem unfair that black people can use a term that white people can’t, or that black people can’t let it go, but Oluo says they can’t let it go until oppression stops happening.
Oluo explains that reclaiming racial slurs within an ethnic community can be empowering, but when others use racial slurs to target communities who are already oppressed, it triggers historical trauma and negatively impacts people’s ability to get through their day-to-day lives. Oluo therefore thinks that it’s unethical for other people to use racial slurs if they are of a different race.
Themes
