Game Changer

by Neal Shusterman

“Color shouldn’t matter” I was always taught—and always believed. But there’s a big difference between “shouldn’t” and “doesn’t.” Privilege is all about not seeing that gap.

I did need to talk to her—to make sure she was okay, and also to make sure she was still the same Katie—but I wouldn’t make her the object of a pissing contest between me and Layton. That was just one more way of disrespecting her.

But America’s racial record was an embarrassment. And so, when the matter of segregation reached the Supreme Court, they decided that racial segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Four of the justices voted to end it because it was the right thing to do. The others were swayed by America’s embarrassment factor, and the fear of a nuclear-ready Soviet Union having the moral high ground over us.

most abusers don’t leave a wide debris field that’s easy to spot, and therefore easy to avoid. They’re not nukes; they’re radiation zones. They’re not tornadoes; they’re balmy summer skies, where the morning sun makes you forget the thunderstorm that’s coming in the afternoon.

As women, we’re expected to paint ourselves to meet some social norm, and yet the very mirror that we use accuses us of being vain. I never thought about it as a guy. I would have said that was ridiculous. That it didn’t matter. But it does. And you know—it’s not just women, it’s everybody. Language secretly pushes and prods every one of us in hundreds of directions we don’t see, until the only way to be careful with your words is to never speak.