Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

by Emmanuel Acho

Everything great is birthed through discomfort.

Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance. —NATHAN RUTSTEIN

think about all the things that can happen as a result of being half as likely to get that callback. That means longer periods of unemployment. More unemployment means a greater risk of homelessness. Think about what joblessness does to a person’s esteem, to their mental health. Think about the fact that with no job, there’s likely no health insurance or no good health insurance. And what about feeling like your name is the cause of your life’s troubles?

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has biases. It’s the job of empathetic and considerate people not to let them dictate actions that harm others.

Avoid lumping people into groups in general. Meet your peers as individuals.

Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice. —CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, AMERICANAH

“You can’t shackle and chain someone for hundreds of years, liberate them to compete freely with the rest and still justly believe that you’ve been fair.”

And white privilege is about the word white, not rich. It’s having advantage built into your life. It’s not saying your life hasn’t been hard; it’s saying your skin color hasn’t contributed to the difficulty in your life.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. —JAMES BALDWIN

we will never achieve a post-racial America as long as the gears of systemic racism continue to churn.

When people proclaim that black lives matter, it’s not about saying white lives don’t matter. It is a given in this country that they do. What black people are really and truly saying is that black lives matter as well as white lives.

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic.

There is a big difference between slave and enslaved. Calling someone a slave is like saying that’s what they were: like they were born into this identity, like what’s happening to them is in line with who they are. Enslaved, on the other hand, puts emphasis on what happened. Enslaved says black people weren’t naturally born as slaves: they were coerced into slavery. Enslaved puts the emphasis on what white people did to black people.