“”Later in the day, it occurs to me that for the first time I met someone who may be responsible for…”
“
“Later in the day, it occurs to me that for the first time I met someone who may be responsible for the murders of many people, and I asked him a polite question.
[…]
“There are also the other stories, the ones about how these neighborhoods were set up, how white men decided where black families would live, how it came to be that Buddha grew up in a place where you carry a gun to come and go from home and kill a boy who looks like a younger version of yourself.
“I don’t have words for these other stories, only the feeling of them inside of me like pebbles piled at the corner of a child’s desk.
[…]
“This is part of the agreement we make by working here, as people of color. We don’t know who harbors doubts about our capacity to think and work and write. We don’t know, not really, who we can trust.
[…]
“It’s been eight years since that day in the theater, and I’m thinking again about a white man confessing to his own people that he cared about the black community, that he thought he could singlehandedly change a hierarchy. I’m thinking about the whiteness of the news organization and how that whiteness reproduced itself with every hire, every promotion, but that is not a scandal.”
”
– You should read all of this, but these are some highlight quotes from: Latina, at the white, male New York Times: “Why are people thinking it’s OK to say racist sh-t in front of me?”
