“All these years Naomi had been asking for help—she was willing to do whatever the psychologist told her to do to get well, and that didn’t seem to mean anything,” Smith said. “It was really hard not to say, ‘Yeah, it’s because you’re Black.’ That was in the back of my mind, because I follow the news. I see white women commit crimes, and I notice that they’re not coming to meet me in prison—they’re going other places.”
