When No One Is Watching

by Alyssa Cole

Black America, the theme park, was billed as “an opportunity to become familiar with plantation life for those of the North who belong to a generation to which the word slavery has but an indefinite and hazy meaning.” This was, like, twenty years after slavery ended, mind you. I mean, I too get nostalgic when an eighties jam starts playing on the radio, but these motherfuckers really needed to reminisce about owning humans?

Simultaneously shocked and not shocked that this actually existed. Excited for what I'll learn about Brooklyn history while reading this book (although also quite disturbing).

suddenly self-conscious where I should be comfortable.

everyone was annoying when you just wanted to sleep and not wake up for years.

He at least puts paprika on his chicken, I’m guessing. Maybe even some Lawry’s.”

HAHAHA

“I don’t believe that story because—deadass?—who walks on subway grates?

I am not dying in a motherfucking Uber, at the hands of a Sox fan no less.

Usually when she’s home, there’s music or humming, or just the thrum of her energy—the same thing that first drew me into the light of her friendship.

“Well, that’s not the crazy thing. After slavery ended, all these guys needed new jobs, so they just moved into the banking sector, even founding some of them. Like you know Veritas Bank? Started by a Brooklyn-Dutch former slave master. You told me before that the banks were all tied up in slavery, when you talked about that crash, but it’s like all these guys never gave up much power, they just . . .” I struggle to find the right way to say this, the right words to convey how royally fucked this is. “They just put on a different suit. Things didn’t change that much. They were still controlling all the money, and in a way they were still controlling the people they didn’t own anymore, because they controlled who got money, where money was invested.

This is frighteningly true. I read The Color of Law in grad school and learned all about how racism is codified into laws in this country, some only recently abolished and others still in effect. The government came up with scary but stealthy ways to keep Black people from owning property or gaining wealth.

“I heard you left that man of yours, the one with a forehead like that Black Star Trek alien.

The insults in this book are THE BEST

Lord, if I’d ever spoken to my mother this way she would’ve death-glared a hole into my soul.

“Always fighting to be done. Rushing won’t help anything. Being strong will.”