Racism

ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.

What it means to decolonize a thing that is not literally colonized varies considerably. It can refer simply to including scholars of all nationalities and races: this is the primary focus of the United Kingdom’s National Union of Students (NUS) campaigns, “Why is My Curriculum White?” (2015) and #LiberateMyDegree (2016).23 Such campaigns focus on

Ta-Nehisi Coates: “The defining feature of being drafted into the Black race [is] the inescapable robbery of time.”

Poet David Whyte offered a fresh perspective through his concept of a “conversational identity.” The idea is that we are constantly changing and evolving, always in the middle of something; therefore, our relationships should be fluid, more conversational, where we are not completing the work but rather beginning the conversation. He explained that

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

black people who are the only black people at their jobs will feel a need to overcompensate and show their blackness explicitly.18 I’m not immune to this. In fact, I’m so susceptible to it that I know where to look for it.

When we consider the origin of the word “radical” in relation to “roots,” let’s not forget what roots do: they make life possible. “Radical,” in its historical definition, is synonymous with “vital”—“designating the humour or moisture once thought to be present in all living organisms as a necessary condition of their vitality.”3 I think that in a

This is really the form that the dilemma takes. It is not solely a question of keeping the body alive; it is rather how not to be killed. Not to be killed becomes the great end, and morality takes its meaning from that center. Until that center is shifted, nothing real can be accomplished. It is the uncanny and perhaps unwitting recognition of this