I understand the impulse to dismiss the import of the summer of 2020, to dismiss the “national conversations,” the raft of TV specials and documentaries, even the protests themselves. Some of us see the lack of policy change and wonder if the movement itself was futile. But policy change is an end point, not an origin. The cradle of material change is in our imagination and ideas. And whereas white supremacy, like any other status quo, can default to the clichéd claims and excuses for the world as it is—bad cops are rotten apples, America is guardian of the free world—we have the burden of
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