The jails springing up around me, that argued for ghettos and projects, that viewed the destruction of the black body as incidental to the preservation of order.
Sometimes fail to walk the air
In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as a pervasive system both native and essential to that body.
So that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined—with Eric Garner’s anger, with Trayvon Martin’s mythical words (...
Perhaps being named black was just someone’s name for being at the bottom, a human turned to object, object turned to pariah.
Of the Sun, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, The African Origins of Civilization
Not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact.
It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip. Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus, wrote Wiley. Unless you find a profit in fenci...
You deserved so much more, little flower. You deserved a Wakanda that cherished you. But this is the Wakanda we have. And while the Midnight Angels breathe, I swear to you... they shall all pay.
Would rather live white than live free.
Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was white, and so Tolstoy mattered, like everything else that was white mattered.
Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—Either I can beat him, or the police. Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot sa...
When presidential candidate Barack Obama presented himself to the black community, he was not to be believed. It strained credulity to think that a man sporting the same rigorously managed haircut as...
My impulses were not filled with unfailing virtue.
The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers.
The changes [in my life] have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps m...
And it became clear that this was not just for the dreams concocted by Americans to justify themselves but also for the dreams that I had conjured to replace them. I had thought that I must mirror the...
The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive mi...
The fact of Barack Obama, of Michelle Obama, changed our lives. Their very existence opened a market. It is important to say this, to say it in this ugly, inelegant way. It is important to remember th...
The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake.
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