Racism

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new

Elvis’s life before fame featured repeated experiences with humiliation, but he also experienced something else characteristic of the South and the United States in general: the wages of Whiteness. An effort to place Elvis more accurately in history doesn’t just require a recognition that he saw his indebtedness to Black musicians. It also means

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 history of ethnic racism, of African Americans commonly degrading Africans as “barbaric” or routinely calling West Indians in 1920s Harlem “monkey chasers”—or when I remembered my own taunts of Kwame back in eighth grade—I tried not to run away from the hypocrisy, either. How can I get upset at immigrants from Africa and South America for

So with white people I know there is nothing really core to them that will make them not harm me. And that leads me to be less inclined to expose myself to them and really trust them as a group.

Racist 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.

Kindness is the water of humanity. Without water, we harden. Kindness is an attitude, an aspiration, and a practice.

I’ve learned that this world has no commitments to my body. No one will try to understand it more than I will. I learned the necessity not only of listening to your own body but also of fighting for it.

Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.