Sublime

aspirational values may organically align with some, but they continue to alienate many of us. When this misalignment occurs, those who are othered are left to try and fit into boxes they have no desire to squeeze themselves into.

I thought I was a subpar student and was bombarded by messages—from Black people, White people, the media—that told me that the reason was rooted in my race…which made me more discouraged and less motivated as a student…which only further reinforced for me the racist idea that Black people just weren’t very studious…which made me feel even more des

Ella Baker’s vision of group-centered leadership hinged on her belief in the power of grassroots political organizing. She understood local organizing as a necessary component of Black self-determination—the principle that people of African descent must take full control of their lives and future and determine the terms of their resistance.21 This

I was a dupe, a chump who saw the ongoing struggles of Black people on MLK Day 2000 and decided that Black people themselves were the problem. This is the consistent function of racist ideas—and of any kind of bigotry more broadly: to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them.

W. E. B. Du Bois taught us this, and we teach it to our students. Whiteness was offered as a promise. Precarity makes it less sturdy. There are White people who work hard all of their lives and Whiteness gives them little materially. On the other hand, there are White people who come from powerful edifices, who can point to paintings on Vanderbilt’