Tell Me Who You Are. It should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand why we are in the situation we are today, not from the pandemic, but in all of the other areas of inequity in our social system. I don’t want to talk too much about the book. It’s written by two women. It’s an extraordinary book. I thought I knew a lot about racial injustice, I thought I understood a lot of things about the least of God’s children, but when I read this book it’s very hard, Tim, for me to read more than three pages and I don’t start to tear up. But if you buy this book, buy it with the intent to learn and understand. Otherwise, if you’re just buying it for entertainment, don’t buy it. It’s a book that’s going to cause you to have difficult conversations with yourself.
George Raveling, Tim Ferriss Show
That endorsement is why I originally bought the book, and I wasn’t disappointed. As I’ve started doing with a lot of the authors I read, whose words are too powerful to be summarized, I have included below some of my highlights from the book. I would strongly encourage everyone to read it cover to cover.
Background
Priya and Winona were high school seniors when they decided to take a gap year in order to “hear for ourselves the diversity of voices across the nation.” The book is a collection of roughly 100 of those interviews, interspersed with research the two women did to understand the context of what is said in the interviews.
Seeing the Problem
Once, the principal of an elementary school pulled us aside and said, “You’re going to have to explain what ‘race’ is, because these kids have no idea.” Then we asked the fourth grade class, “Who here has experienced or seen racism?” Almost all of their hands shot up.
Priya & Winona
It was astonishing to us how we became conscious of these divides now, but growing up, like most other youth in Princeton, we had no idea that “Black and Hispanic neighborhoods” existed, that slavery had existed in our town square, and that to understand the intergenerational legacy of that injustice would have dramatically altered how we understood the divided lunch tables, clubs, and classes at school we saw every day.
Priya & Winona
The New York Times posts a list of “52 Places to Go” each year. Well, I’m Black, I’m female, and I usually travel alone. So, I look at this list, and I’m thinking, “I could not go to any of these places.”
Liz – San Francisco, California
Some people never realize how poor their vision is until they get glasses—once you slide those shiny frames onto the bridge of your nose, the world looks completely different. An increased clarity about how our country was built upon race, that the concept of race was constructed to divide us, will leave you similarly flabbergasted…
Priya & Winona
While visiting Alaska, we began to recognize that race—this ubiquitous thing that controls our lives—goes deeper than the ground we walk on (whiiiiich was most likely obtained by a violated treaty with whatever indigenous tribe lived there). Race goes well beyond our history. We began to notice how, when we visited the Anchorage drugstore, the “skin color” Band-Aids lining the walls weren’t meant for Priya’s brown skin; how, on the sidewalk, we passed by a carefree, singing White biker and then, one block away, an officer calling a Latino biker to a stop; how, in the TV show we watched later that night, the one Asian-American character didn’t say a word; how taking a selfie together was nearly impossible because our phones can’t handle our different skin tones (thanks to the technology only being tested on White folks); how almost all the artwork that hangs on the government buildings we visited were of White men; how the women who later did our stage makeup and hair tried to make Priya’s skin lighter (“ brighter”) and Winona’s eyes bigger (“more obvious”); how our university campuses are dominated by colonial-style housing; how every single city we’ve been to had racially divided neighborhoods; how people have told Winona her playing of the erhu “doesn’t feel as civilized as Western instruments”; how doctors more easily ignore the pain of Black women—who are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy—and how, growing up, we were taught that White was right.
As a lawyer at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), it amazes me when people keep trying to wiggle out of something and say that it’s not about race. I’d go as far as to say that just about everything is about race at some point. For instance, you are more likely to be sentenced to death if you are a Black person and your victim is White. If you are a White person and your victim is Black, you’re more than likely not going to end up being sentenced to death.
Ashley – Montgomery, Alabama
If you’re in a diverse place, ask yourself: Where do most of the people of color live? Is that area perceived as “safe”? Are its public schools as prosperous as the ones in, say, the more White neighborhoods? Just because New York City is more diverse than Council Bluffs doesn’t mean that it’s more racially harmonious or equitable. In fact, New York City has the fourth highest level of residential segregation in America.
Priya & Winona
On Being Supportive
It’s important to validate people’s experiences. I have an amazing White friend who, when I talk to her about my experiences, doesn’t tell me I’m wrong or say “yes, but.” She might not understand but she’s listening and she hears me and supports me and appreciates what I’m sharing. It feels great to have that. If someone tells you they don’t get heard enough in their honors science class, say, “Okay, I understand, maybe I don’t see it enough because it’s not affecting me, but if you’re saying it’s happening, then it’s happening, and I’m going to do what I can to be the megaphone for your voice.”
Alexa – Chicago, Illinois
I could talk forever about this stuff. I can talk with my grandma, because she’s my grandma. But with older employees at work? I’m talking, and they say they get me, but I look at their faces and know they don’t get it. White students need to know about the experiences of students of color, but the people who aren’t gonna listen are the ones who need to be changed. Only a White person, I’ve learned, can talk to another White person and get farther than I can get. Because either they’re gonna stop listening to me, I’m gonna get angry, or both.
Justin – Lawrence, Kansas
I realized I had to stop sugarcoating things for White people. My framework shifted. I used to see it as my responsibility to educate everyone, and then I realized that it’s my right to speak truth, but not my responsibility to educate.
Vic – Seattle, Washington
It [sexual assault activism] triggers my own incidents of being a victim of sexual assault. Any exhaustion around dismantling White supremacy is different, because I don’t experience that same triggering emotional labor. One is “I have to do this, because it’s my job as a White person who has all these privileges,” versus, “I don’t have to do this, but I’m choosing to, when I have the energy, because I’m a woman and I do want patriarchy dismantled.” The way I describe it to my partner is, “Conversations around gender are my gift. Conversations around White supremacy are my responsibility.”
Melina – Denver, Colorado
I always have to remember the role I have in lifting up other voices that are not in the room. We need to always challenge ourselves internally, the roles we play in social justice spaces, and if you are in a position of power, how can we disrupt spaces that White people have always been the gatekeepers?
Gerry – Asheville, North Carolina
Racism
I’m from an island of Vietnam, so the food that I cook is very different. The way that I look is very different. The way that I speak is different. Non-Vietnamese customers have told me that my food “doesn’t taste authentic.” Actually, “authentic” has become my new least favorite word. I always wonder, is it because of the way I look? Or is it that me being Vietnamese doesn’t match with your notion of being Vietnamese?
Chef Tu – Oakland, California
I live up North now, but, especially when I go down South, I get reminded of these things. When my daughter was twelve, we went down South again for my father’s birthday—he moved back down there. We just went to have a good time at this restaurant, but it took us about half an hour to get a menu and water for the table. It took us about an hour and a half after that to get service. Meanwhile, all these tourists, not people of color, were getting water, breadsticks, all the stuff you’re supposed to get. My sister and I just looked at each other. We knew what this was, but we didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else. It’s still like that down there.
Lisa – Wilmington, Delaware
The world just makes our different skin colors very hard to forget. On our first date, someone yelled out of their car, “What are you doing with that Black whore?” A part of me just kinda died. I felt degraded and embarrassed in front of this guy I liked. I felt like I had brought it upon myself.
Shermaine – Washington, D.C.
Systemic Inequality
I had to stay up four hours more to study, and teach myself how to use Excel and PowerPoint, whereas others had already been given the material. I also had imposter syndrome—how could I aspire to be a lecturer or researcher, if I didn’t see anyone who looks like me doing it?
Shermaine – Washington, D.C.
When we go to the library, we purposely get books with a lot of diverse characters. If every book has White people in it, and your kid is Black, there’s something unspoken conveyed. If every teacher is White, and your kid is Black, that also has an impact.
Kathan – Omaha, Nebraska
Research finds that police officers, and people more generally, tend to associate African Americans with threat. This is just one example of implicit bias, which refers to “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.” Implicit biases are pervasive, generally favor our own in-group, do not necessarily align with our declared beliefs, and can reinforce explicit biases. They are developed from an early age through persistent implicit and explicit messaging—for example, from the media we watch or role models we learn to admire—and they can be gradually unlearned with deliberate effort. Interestingly, the presence of implicit bias when tested will vary with internal stressors like lack of sleep (less sleep equals the appearance of more bias).
Priya & Winona
The criminal justice system is so messed up. Here in Oklahoma, the majority of White people deal with powdered cocaine. And Black people like cocaine in rocks, crack. People would get more time in prison for crack cocaine than powdered cocaine. Police brutality is real: I was called n*****, and slapped, and punched, and all kinds of different stuff by police officers. It’s bad. Now that we have cell phones and technology, it’s being captured—but it’s always been going on. Race relations means holding people accountable, no matter what the title.
Mareo – Tulsa, Oklahoma
In Europe, only the police are allowed to have any weapons. You have police brutality, they fight with people, but they don’t shoot. I’ve never heard of a police officer killing somebody in Europe. Never.
Shoghi – Orlando, Florida
When you’re White in this country, you’re taught that everything belongs to you. You think you have a right to everything. . . . You’re conditioned this way. It’s not because your hair is a texture or your skin is light. It’s the fact that the laws and the culture tell you this. You have a right to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, be however—and people just got to accommodate themselves to you.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Words Matter
People here always say, ‘Comeback City this and Comeback City that.’ It just feels like a punch in the gut because it’s code for gentrification. I was kicked out of my home. They upped the rent ridiculously on my family, like by four times the original rent, and I was homeless for a little bit. It’s clear that all the Black people are getting kicked out, and all the White millennials are moving in. The city’s getting safer, yes, but at what cost?
Karin – Detroit, Michigan
I listen to people who know where they’re from, know how people from their culture act, and I feel pain. I’ll never get to know that because that was robbed from me when my ancestors were stolen and brought here to America.
Treniya – Atlanta, Georgia
Still, I have to be careful about how I respond. Getting “she-bombed” all the time feels like a racial microaggression, and I have to get affirmation all the time. I understand why people get gender reassigned, because they want the way they feel and the way they look to match.
AJ – Washington, D.C.
I take it personally when people say casually, “Oh, she’s so bipolar.” It’s not a casual thing. People are suffering in silence.
Deb – Salt Lake City, Utah
In fourth grade, someone said, “You talk White.” I never understood what that meant. I enunciate, I speak correctly, so does that mean I talk White? I remember someone called me an “Oreo,” and I also didn’t get that one—I was like, “I’m not a cookie, that’s stupid.”
Brönte – Deland, Florida
People usually identify me by my Taiwanese side, ignoring that I’m half-Jewish. It feels like multiracial people are frequently identified by whatever part of them is of less value, or more oppressed. My friend who’s Black and Japanese, for example, is usually just called Black.
Samuel – New Jersey