“How would you feel if he was Black?” I asked her, and myself. “I’d be really embarrassed,” she said, speaking for me and for so many of us trapped on the plantation of uplift suasion. “Because we don’t need anyone making us look bad.” “In front of White people?” I asked her. “Yes. It makes them look down on us. Makes them more racist.” We thought on a false continuum, from more racist to less racist to not racist. We believed good Black behavior made White people “less racist,” even when our experiences told us it usually did not. But that night, we thought about it together and shared a few
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