I suppose I could spend time brooding over those men in the club, file it as evidence that white people still maintain a simmering hostility toward those who look like me. But I don’t want to confer on such bigotry a power it no longer possesses. I choose to think about Robert instead, and the small but difficult gesture he made. If a young man like Robert can make the effort to cross the currents of habit and fear in order to do what he knows is right, then I want to be sure that I’m there to meet him on the other side and help him onto shore.
