The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America

by Nikesh Shukla

In the modern world, black is as unimaginable without white as white is unimaginable without black. What we are is shaped by the other, for better or worse (for us, mostly worse), but interaction is real.

People of color learn early to take responsibility for creating their own spaces and their own safety, whether that means choosing a university in a “diverse” area or simply looking for another person of color in the room.

In aspiring to whiteness, there was loss too, because it required forgetting.

They act with an entitlement that I’m reminded I don’t have, laying claim in a way that I cannot.

For two white folks who claim to love India, it’s clear they never thought of it as more than a backdrop to their own story.

the consensus seemed to be that Chinese culture looked best as an accessory on a white person.

In America, I have become the accent of my colonizer.

James Baldwin’s observation, “I walk into a room and everyone there is terribly proud of himself because I managed to get to the room.”