The Holdout

by Graham Moore

This is the craziest thing about good, well-intentioned white people, isn’t it? What lengths you’ll go to not to come off as in any way racist.

Racism is about racial orientation. To say you made judgments about Bobby Nock because he’s black isn’t saying you’re some irredeemable redneck son of a bitch, dragging around a rope and a hood. We think of ‘racists’ as these other people—this subset of subhuman assholes. The villains in all those ridiculous movies with beatific white saviors. When the villains are so clear, we can tuck ourselves into bed at night knowing that we’re nothing like them. But what if it’s not so clear? What if it’s more complicated than here’s some heroic non-racist white people and here’s some villainous racist white people? What if, for me, the most pressing questions are not about how ‘racist’ you think you are or can prove that you aren’t. I don’t give a shit whether you think you’re a one or a ten on some kind of racism Kinsey scale. I care about what you’re going to do about it.”