My writer friends, speaking in low tones by candlelight over wine, began to discuss the possibility of moving to another country. “Black Americans have always struggled here and we stayed,” my wife countered. It was as though they were all speaking a different language as Americans. I began to painfully discern that their America was different from the America I looked to for my freedom. I had never been a part of the history they were individually reacting to. And though they all came from different backgrounds as Americans, they were responding to the potential loss of an empire—their
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