race

In my naïveté, I had simply assumed that once roles were created for Vietnamese people, Vietnamese actors would be found. But no.

Emma and Wallace had become friends by virtue of the fact that neither of them was a white man in their program.

Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world.

But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper

There seems to be an unwritten rule, hurtful and at odds with the realities of American culture. It says you aren’t supposed to wonder whether as a Black person, a Black woman, you really might be inferior—not quite bright enough, not quite quick enough, not quite good enough to do the things you want to do. Though, of course, you do wonder. You’re

racism doesn’t just distort white people — what about us? What about the effects of white racism upon the ways Black people view each other? Racism internalized?

These were the moments when I was reminded that no matter how passively I engaged with my Blackness, it was never not a force at work in my life. And, I found, the knowledge of my Blackness could be used as a weapon against me at any moment.

Watching Pryor, I realized that I was still writing to that institution. It’s a hard habit to kick. I’ve been raised and educated to please white people and this desire to please has become ingrained into my consciousness. Even to declare that I’m writing for myself would still mean I’m writing to a part of me that wants to please white people. I

Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any