So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

I found this book to be the introduction to how to look at, think about, approach, and talk about race in the post George Floyd still COVID America that we live in. The divide has not been wider and the conversations are fewer and harder to have. The quickness of those who clearly have racial bias to shut down in any conversation about race because of their sensitivity to being seen as racist is real, and it certainly meets the definitiion of white fragility, but somehow the book of that title doesn't quite address how to talk about it quite a well. So if you haven't started to read and think about the problem, this is a good place to start. The author, who is biracial with a white mother who raised her and a black father who is not in the picture, is well aware of how utterly exhausting it is to be “the black friend” or to have to coexist in a majority-white environment. Even in her own home there was a lack of an ally, in that her mother did not see the myriad of ways in which her daughter was being assualted on a daily basis. There are some very hard things to read in this book, and I think there will be something for everyone in terms of what happens, what to do, what to expect as a result of what you do, and it is different advice depending on the color of your skin. The author is smart and funny and insightful, and I learned a lot reading this that I hope I can operationalize going forward.