Racism, Privilege, and White Supremacy Theme Analysis

In So You Want to Talk about Race, author Ijeoma Oluo argues that white supremacy is deeply entrenched in American culture. Oluo sees the United States as systematically centered on privileging the needs of white people at the cost of people of color. She finds this agenda so pervasive that it shapes every aspect of U.S. society, including education, law enforcement, politics, and the media. She argues that individual racists are the product of a society that subtly teaches them that people of color are inferior, and that even people who don’t believe they are racist still benefit from other people’s oppression if they have racial privilege. To Oluo, complacency about privilege is actually a form of active racism. Oluo stresses that everybody who is committed to racial equality in the U.S. is obliged to take action against systemic racism whenever they can safely do so—for example, voting for district attorneys who are more likely to prosecute cases of police brutality. Ultimately, Oluo argues, changing a racist system is the most effective way to dismantle white supremacy in the United States.

Oluo depicts the U.S. as a society that was designed to preserve white supremacy at the expense of people of color. Oluo says that racism—believing that certain races are inferior to others—was a lie that people told themselves to legitimize slavery and indigenous genocide in the early days of U.S. history. In other words, white supremacist beliefs have effectively built a society on the assumption that “you will get more if other people get less.” Further, Oluo claims that people aren’t naturally racist—they become racist under the influence of education, media, politics, and other public aspects of U.S. life that privilege whiteness. Oluo describes the U.S. as a society that was designed to oppress black and brown people so that white people could reap the economic benefits. She argues that racism is a tool used by people at the top of the hierarchy—rich, white men—to achieve wealth and power. Oluo thinks that in every demographic of U.S. society, “black and brown people are consistently getting less,” showing that the system is working as intended and that the effects of systemic racism are pervasive.

Oluo argues that in a society designed to preserve white supremacy, doing nothing is active racism, because it perpetuates the existing system. Many people in the U.S. have privilege without realizing it, as people often focus on the fact that they’re disadvantaged in some way without realizing other ways in which they’re privileged. For example, as an able-bodied, black, queer woman, Oluo is oppressed because of her gender, race, and sexual orientation, but she is privileged in being able-bodied. Similarly, in white supremacist societies, systemic racism funnels more opportunity in life—including college admissions, jobs, homes, and more—to white people by keeping people of color away (say, through mass incarceration). People who do nothing to change the status-quo (or lessen their privilege) are thus actively benefitting from the oppression of others.  As Oluo puts it, complacency is racist because “systemic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and just by letting it run, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle a machine if we want to make change.” In other words, Oluo believes that everyone in American society must participate in dismantling the “machine” of racism—to stand by passively is to implicitly condone the oppression of marginalized people.

Oluo thinks that people who care about racial justice are obligated to challenge systemic racism whenever it’s safe for them to do so. For example, to limit the power of white supremacy in education, people can talk to their school boards and demand more diverse school curricula. To combat police brutality, people can vote for district attorneys that are actively committed to fighting corruption and prosecuting police crimes. To challenge opportunity gaps in the workplace, people can call out microaggressions that depict people of color as less competent. Ultimately, for Oluo, the only way to be antiracist in a white supremacist society is to target systemic racism (whenever it’s safe to do so). Changing the system that creates racist individuals should thus always be the goal of a person who’s committed to equality.