Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

by Emmanuel Acho

I’d bet some Dallas Cowboys season tickets that it’s tough, if not impossible, to hold bigoted thoughts about someone whose humanity you recognize. I’d double down: it would take some next-level self-deluding to discriminate against someone you respect enough to listen to.

If things go the way I want, you will leave this book with an increased understanding of race. You will have more empathy and grant people more grace. And if you have more empathy and are more gracious, then you’ll be less judgmental. And if you’re less judgmental, then your judgment is less likely to play itself out in racism.

IN HIS POEM “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes writes, “O, let America be America Again / The land that never has been yet.”