South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

by Imani Perry

The landscape (and here I don’t mean Charlottesville but the United States) is still frightening because one doesn’t know what is lurking beneath the professions of equality. I think that’s the part that people who defend sites of violence against their tragedies (as in “See, we really aren’t like that!”) remain deliberately ignorant about. It is a cruel and willful ignorance. They just act like they don’t know.

I remember when my father’s answering machine message began with “I accept the charges” so he didn’t miss a call from inside.