ijeoma oluo so you want to talk about race

We also need to connect the dots between the present and the future. Instead, he says it’s to make us more sensitive and thoughtful about our language use. Lester notes that the point of having open discussions around the use of the N-word is not to forbid the word or make it taboo without explaining why. Every time a white person uses it, they invoke all of that history, whether they mean to or not.īlack university professor Neal Lester developed a whole college-level class at Arizona State University centered around the N-word.

The reason is that “nigger” is weighed down by centuries of slavery, dehumanization, oppression, abuse, and brutality. For example, you may see black people using the word “nigger” amongst themselves and wonder why you aren’t allowed to use it too. We also need to understand history if we’re to understand the power that some words have to do damage. A police chief later described the boy as “menacing.” (Shortform note: Police officers have been shown to judge black children as less innocent and more culpable for their actions than white children, also overestimating the ages of black children aged ten to 17 by approximately three years.) The History of Language Police even perceive children playing with toy guns as threatening: Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by Cleveland police in 2014 for holding a toy gun, and when his 14-year-old sister ran over to help him, police tackled her and put her in handcuffs. (Shortform note: The figure for whites is one in 23.)īlacks and Native Americans are three and a half to four times more likely to be killed by police than white people. As Oluo demonstrates, in the present day, black people are more likely to be subject to unnecessary and humiliating disciplinary measures by police, and one in every three black men and one in every six Latino men go to jail at least once in their lives.

Ijeoma oluo so you want to talk about race