More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When you have an accent, people often think you possess the intellect of a fence post.
Char and 1 other person liked this
Nothing makes a monolingual gringo as nervous as not knowing what those around him are saying. Not all white people have the same level of privilege, but they all share an aversion to being forced to step momentarily into otherness.
The world watched it happen online and on TV and forgot about it the day after it ended because the idiot at the White House said something more stupid than whatever stupid thing he had said before.
Brian focused on his food like his life depended on it. Like a lot of white people, his whiteness turned into confusion wrapped in shame in the face of blatant racism.
The land doesn’t care about the stupid lines humans insist on drawing on them, and the southern border is no different. There’s nothing there that makes it obvious you’re approaching an interstitial space between cultures, nothing that says people of one color live on one side and people of a different color inhabit the opposite side.
Viewed from the border itself, the conflict is not between two countries; it’s an argument between neighbors that occupy the same land but don’t share the same privileges, and it’s an argument often policed by people who don’t even live anywhere near that neighborhood.
