Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time (Berlin Family Lectures)

But the answer “black” immediately carries a heavy load, and a number of potentially violent actions—that would have been unlikely otherwise—suddenly become psychologically possible. You don’t just lecture or book this type of body or take it down to the station. It would have no respect for you if you did that—after all, it is more than used to ro

To truthfully write about race, I almost have to write against narrative because the racialized mind is, as Frantz Fanon wrote, an “infernal circle.”

White people were looking at themselves and what their history has wrought, like a domestic animal having its face shoved into its own urine.”