So you want to talk about race
No not really. However, I don’t have much perspective on the topic so I figured it would be beneficial to enlighten myself, especially given the current social environment.
If you didn’t know, “So you want to talk about race” is a New York Times bestselling book by Seattle native Ijeoma Oluo. On the bus ride to work (not to brag, but I read going to work and write coming from work) I’ve been slowly progressing through the book. Currently I’m four chapters deep.
My first major impression from the work is that Ijeoma is a damn good writer. I’m genuinely awestruck. It’s almost to the point where I’ve thought about sending an anonymous letter to express my praise. Most impressive from her writing is her mastery of subordinate clauses (those snippets, usually between commas, that aren’t complete sentences but give important background details). Her writing just flows seamlessly and the transitions are incredibly natural. It makes for quick, yet comprehensible writing. Her paragraphs, for example, siphon her thoughts to best showcase her points which help signpost the reader through her well articulated thought process. Fanboy sigh. As someone who wants to improve as a writer, I’d like to emulate Ijeoma as much as I can.
In terms of the actual content of the piece, I’ve come to the realization that I might be privileged. Gasp! That might be hard to swallow, surely you can’t be privileged says you the blog reader, but let me convince you. I’m: mentally healthy, grew up in the middle class, white, male, non-disabled, neuro-typical, a documented citizen, grew up in a stable home environment, have stable housing, have reliable transportation… Literally every example she gave, I checked the box on. I haven’t reached the point in the book where Ijeoma tells me what to do with this information, but at the very least, it’s thought provoking. My entire life has been pretty easy; I’ve always chalked it up to luck, but maybe, and more accurately, it’s somewhat a result of privilege. It makes me feel fortunate and more compassionate towards those who didn’t start out with everything I’ve been given on day one. How can I help those with less?
I highly recommend reading “So you want to talk about race”. Ijeoma Oluo is a baller of a writer. Hands down fantastic. And even if you don’t read the book for the writing itself, the content is pretty good too.
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Some dumb thoughts that came up in the writing of this post:
Grammatically, it’s incorrect to follow a verb with a semi-colon. But, while writing this blog excerpt, I eventually came to the part “I’m: mentally healthy, grew up in …”
I looked over what I’d written then asked my girlfriend, “Should I write this if it’s grammatically incorrect but I think it works in this instance?”
She said, “Not following grammatical rules makes you a bad-ass writer.”
So, I decided to keep it.
I’ve been living in Seattle for about a year now. So it’s been about one year since I’ve seen any diversity. Which is to say: Seattle is very white. That’s probably not ideal.
