In this bracing, straight-forward, pragmatic book, Oluo has created something like the ultimate race-relations primer. First and foremost, Oluo’s writing is the real star here, by which I don’t mean to say that it’s intrusive or overly stylized. It’s the very conversational, but blunt, tone that makes you keep turning pages in this book. Oluo isn’t writing for an academic audience; she’s writing for a mainstream audience, but she’s also not treating the mainstream audience like they’re idiots. She introduces concepts in a very straight-forward way and then explains and explores them, building on them as she goes to create a book that explores some very complex issues in some very complex ways that I am still quite confident could be read by most people and be understood. I like that Oluo doesn’t mince words, but neither is she aggressive or offensive for the sake of those things. You don’t feel like she’s pulling punches in order to spare the reader’s feelings, but you do feel that she’s genuinely trying to connect to the reader on a human level and communicate with them in a practical way, not attack them or belittle them. The book is also very smartly structured. It is a book that is best read in order because Oluo does introduce concepts and then build on them, as I said, but each chapter title is also a question. For example, chapter four is Why Am I Always Being Told to “Check My Privilege?” Chapter nine is Why Can’t I Say the N-Word? Chapter fifteen is But What If I Hate Al Sharpton? This allows the reader, if they have a particularly burning question when they pick up the book, to do a little targeted investigation. I think this is super-super-smart on Oluo’s part and it makes entry into the book super-easy. I hate calling books like this “important,” but I think this one genuinely is. I think the reader, whatever their opinions already, will come away from this book thinking about things in a new way and ready to talk about things in a new way. And, unless you’re just spoiling for a fight, you won’t find anything here to make you mad. That makes the book accessible to a lot of people that some books of this type just aren’t. Threading that needle of being blunt and plain-spoken without being aggressive or angry isn’t easy and God knows we also need books that are aggressive and angry. But for what this book is, it’s the best of its kind, at least that I’ve read. Pick it up; have the conversation. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – nuanced, thoughtful, blunt, pragmatic book is as good a book on modern race issues as I’ve read; aimed squarely at a mainstream audience, this book is important and compelling. 3 ½ stars.