Ijeoma Oluo

These are very scary times for a lot of people who are just now realizing that America is not, and has never been, the melting-pot utopia that their parents and teachers told them it was.

Money is also a social construct—a series of rules and agreements we all made up while pretending that these pieces of paper are worth our entire lives.

Race was not only created to justify a racially exploitative economic system, it was invented to lock people of color into the bottom of it. Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior.

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.

The promise that keeps racism alive tells you that you will benefit most and others will eventually benefit… a little. It has you believing in trickle-down social justice.

If you are looking for a simple way to determine if something is about race, here are some basic rules. And when I say basic, I mean basic.

1. It is about race if a person of color thinks it is about race.

2. It is about race if it disproportionately or differently affects people of color.

3. It is about race if it fits into a broader pattern of events that disproportionately or differently affect people of color.

if a person of color says that something is about race, it is—because regardless of the details, regardless of whether or not you can connect the dots from the outside, their racial identity is a part of them and it is interacting with the situation.

We are all products of a racialized society, and it affects everything we bring to our interactions.

This also means that just because something is about race, doesn’t mean that white people can’t be similarly impacted by it and it doesn’t mean that the experience of white people negatively impacted is invalidated by acknowledging that people of color are disproportionately impacted.

(1) Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race. Or (2) Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race, when those views are reinforced by systems of power.