Racism

Epistemicide is at the heart of colonization, but we cannot decolonize our minds by unknowing modernity. Like it or not, your belonging is dependent on a reclamation of the dismissed ancient and a reconciliation with the dominant modern.

The racial status quo is comfortable for white people, and we will not move forward in race relations if we remain comfortable. The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean

it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.

The logic of apartheid is difficult to follow, for it seems from our vantage point a strange kind of illogic. Liberal multiculturalism takes for granted that the route to racial harmony is mutual understanding, and the route to understanding is contact, exposure, conversation. So our modern studies show that those who know actual black people, or

Minor feelings are not often featured in contemporary American literature because these emotions do not conform to the archetypal narrative that highlights survival and self-determination.

black people have often been figured as essentially feeling bodies and bodies that in turn hail more feelings to life: