More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is not only that confrontation is headache-producing; it is also that you have a destination that doesn’t include acting like this moment isn’t inhabitable, hasn’t happened before, and the before isn’t part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where we are and where we are going.
They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure.
The prestigious school she mentions doesn’t seem to assuage her irritation.
He looks at you a long minute before saying he can speak on the phone wherever he wants.
Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by, oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry. I am so sorry, so, so sorry.
It responds to insult and attempted erasure simply by asserting presence, and the energy required to present, to react, to assert is accompanied by visceral disappointment: a disappointment in the sense that no amount of visibility will alter the ways in which one is perceived.
“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
Perhaps this is how racism feels no matter the context—randomly the rules everyone else gets to play by no longer apply to you, and to call this out by calling out “I swear to God!” is to be called insane, crass, crazy. Bad sportsmanship.
For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip.
She has grown up, another decides, as if responding to the injustice of racism is childish and her previous demonstration of emotion was free-floating and detached from any external actions by others.
instinctively you take two steps back though all urgency leaves the possibility of any kind of relationship as you realize nowhere is where you will get from here.
He gave me the flashlight, she said, I didn’t want to turn it on. It was all black. I didn’t want to shine a light on that.
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn’t begin the same way, each time it begins it’s the same.
because white men can’t police their imagination black people are dying
What happens to you doesn’t belong to you, only half concerns you.
It wasn’t a match, I say. It was a lesson.
