Sublime

Seemingly contradictory calls to lock up and to save Black people dueled in legislatures around the country but also in the minds of Americans. Black leaders joined with Republicans from Nixon to Reagan, and with Democrats from Johnson to Bill Clinton, in calling for and largely receiving more police officers, tougher and mandatory sentencing, and

“The American people are infected with racism—that is the peril,” King concluded. “Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals—that is the hope.”

Shad Davis. He has a son. He’s a scrap collector, does odd jobs and such for the colored on the Hill. I believe they call him Fatty,”

In a startling scene that underscores the absurdity of white supremacist practices, the police officer charged the driver for driving a bus that was “too yellow.” The officer’s “reasoning” was that the bus was deceptive—too closely resembling a school bus.

While white Americans fetishize the idea of living in racial harmony, they don’t think about the millions of instances of antiblack sentiment—overt and subtle—we encounter on a daily basis from the white world that has opened its doors to us but has done little remodeling.

slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.

From this point of view, Rodney King’s protective reflexes, the disorderly movements by which he struggled to stay alive (he flaps his arms, staggers, tries to get up, stands on his knees) were described as being under his “total control” and as evidence of “dangerous intent,” as if violence were the sole voluntary action possible for a Black body,