So You Want To Talk About Race | Key Takeaways

This is a pretty light read and I would strongly recommend it as a first read for anyone who is looking to understand more about racism. The author is clearly passionate about anti-racism as well as feminism movements but she is also willing to examine the thought process of the "white" community towards racism issue. Throughout the book, she gives out nuggets of advice on how to identify if an issue is justifiably a racism issue, how to hold productive and efficient conversations about racism with people of different races, as well as how to resolve a tense situation during a discussion should it arise. The author cleverly ties in her personal life experiences so that the audience would be able to empathize with her more.

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Key Takeaway 1 :

What are the basic indicators that an issue is related to racism?

1. When a colored person says or think that it is

2. It disproportionately or differently affects a person of race

3. It fits into a broader pattern of events that disproportionately or differently affects a person of race

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Key Takeaway 2 :

Concept of privilege in the social justice context

1. An advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not

2. These privilege are based upon people's gender, sexuality, body type, neurological ability and yes, race.

3. A privilege has to come with someone else's disadvantage

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Key Takeaway 3 :

What are micro-aggressions?

1. Small and subtle aggressions

2. Micro-aggressions help hold the system of white supremacy together, because if we do not have this ways to separate and dehumanize people, we empathize with people more and we would have to care of the current system that are crushing them

3. Racial trauma is cumulative

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Novel insight gained from this book:

We like to filter new information through our own experiences to see if it computes. If it matches up with what we have experienced, it's valid. If it doesn't, its's not. But race is not a universal experience.

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That's a wrap on our first post in the "Key Takeaway" series where we highlight some important insights from various books on racism. We hope you have gained some novel insights from this post and learnt a little more about racism from this short post. However, we do encourage you to read the entire book itself for context and it's definitely an enjoyable read! If you have anything you want to bring to our attention, please do contact us as we are always appreciative of any feedback we receive! We hope to provide you more content in the short future!

It's no longer time to accept things we can't change;

It's time to change things we can't accept.