Sublime

White families, meanwhile, were moving out of the city in droves, lured by the suburbs—the promise of better schools, more space, and probably more whiteness, too.

Now, suddenly, the heretofore ignored negative qualities of the working man were brought to the fore. He was white, first of all. And racist, sexist, and homophobic.

“Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn’t been totaled or repossessed.”

Marijuana or mota or chronic

“He was saying, ‘Bloody Japanese, out of here—I kill you!’ ” my guide said. This old man had never seen a foreigner before, and he thought I was a Japanese invading his village.

We knew of words that were not proper-noun capital Black getting used, we definitely heard those, from older guys or parents or whoever, people ticked off over something they’d never met firsthand and knew nothing about.

Innocence is, as Bernstein writes, not just an “absence of knowledge” but “an active state of repelling knowledge,” embroiled in the statement, “Well, I don’t see race” where I eclipses the seeing.

be fired.’

Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over.