I used to pray that I would grow big and strong enough to win a fight like that. I realize now that the problem wasn’t merely the limitation posed by my size. The problem was the limited tools and imagination that made violence the only solution. The problem was the widespread lack of respect for Black women that allowed my sister’s boyfriend to call her something so vile. The problem was my inability to see that, at bottom, he and I weren’t combatants. We were fellow prisoners to a toxic definition of manhood, struggling for the remnants of respect left after a society had stripped us of
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