Racism

Mackey borrows his title from Amiri Baraka, who aptly defines the history of white musicians profiting off of black music as turning “a verb into a noun.”

The black world was expanding before me, and I could see now that that world was more than a photonegative of that of the people who believe they are white.

American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist.

In this long battle, a battle by no means finished, the unforeseeable effects of which will be felt by many future generations, the white man’s motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity. And despite the terrorization which the Negro in America endured and endures sporadically until

We train our focus on beauty here or there—this poem, that architecture—because it is easier than bearing witness to our own story. We begin to gravitate not toward beauty but toward illusion. In this state, you are not approaching what you seek. You are running from your own face. But this is not the way of wonder. Wonder requires a person not to

GUIDED PRACTICE FOR R: RECOGNIZE Inquiry: What’s happening? What’s obvious in this moment? Practice: Noticing and naming