Metzl - Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland.

Author: Jonathon Metzl.

Review:

An overview and introduction into the major causes of politically induced death, of whites are cleared stated in this book. It talks about the outcome of whites in the rural Midwest after the Trump administration. Through the 3 major causes of death for rural white Americans are 1. Gun induced suicide, 2. Lack of hospital due to reduced ACA and 3rd. The reduction in education spending. All of those major scenarios have an epidemiological approach and conclusion of their research, introduction into the history of racism in that field, soulful interviews with communities that have gone through it, and with disclaimers of why a certain research approach was picked.

I’m really happy with this book’s introduction to the politics of guns, and is a great place to jump off into the world of gun related death statistics. Heavily reliable for the understandings of rural white Americans who’s lives, some racist, of why they do the actions they do. The conclusion of this book is thus: dying of whiteness.”

Reading Stats:

• 12/31/19 - 1/1/20

• Reading Level: Sophomore Level College

• Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notes

• The “Dickies” legislation that was passed in 1996 prohibits any NIH or public funding on any research that could be used to study gun violence or any research that has to do with gun prevention. The legislation has been renewed every year since then.

• Due to the lack of funding in gun prevention research, there is thus a lack of public information on guns! So one of the best place for gun information is from death! Since the “causes of death” section of death certificate includes guns. :D

• Fascinating research on suicidality methods! Thinking is the best prevention for suicide, thinking requires more time to concentrate the death. Thus pills have a 3 percent chance of death, even though it’s the highest weapon of suicide where as guns have 85 percent due to lack of time to think. To think then kill rather than eat, think, then die.

• How many people just wanted to make a statement, to the end that turned themselves into a number wasting away.

• Americans held 4.4 percent of the world population but owns about 43 percent of the world supply of privately own guns. Like whaaaa?? Also there’s 200 million guns in the United States, wtf.

• The gun acts as a form of totem for whites, it symbolizes: masculinity, freedom, and patriarchy. But for the non whites it’s like giving the tools of oppression to the oppressor (the whites).

• Gun Background Check law( PTP) In Missouri when the ptp law was rejected, there was an increase of 16 percent in gun suicides, where as the enforcement of sub laws in Connecticut has reduced gun suicide by 13 percent. Other variables has been included for control sample.

• White men in Missouri is 7x times more likely to kill them selves with a handgun than it is to protect themselves when armed. Bruh

• Cost! Healthcare. The ACA saved money and allowed people to live longer!

Kendi - How to Be an Antiracist

Author: Ibram X. Kendi

Review:

In an interlacing of pedagogy and personal livelihood, Kendi has given a clear account of overt racism compared to the more dangerous subversive racism in the United States. They are both politically induced racist policies that propagate into the world of racist thinking styles. In this overview course on what it means to be an anti-racist, compared to a racist, compared to an assimilationist, Kendi gives precise introductory origins of each sector of racist ideologies and their backgrounds. The book is broken down into Dualing Consciousness, Power, Biology, Ethnicity, Culture, Class, Queer, and a few more topics. Each section delves into each other as intersectional as it must be, and has a clear focus on the elucidation of such issues. Each issue chapter with terms and definitions, to clearly solidify what grounds of truth that we will be standing on. Each section has a form of personal anecdote, which later finds to be very important in the formation of policies, histories, and self-consciousness of that topic.

Overall, an excellent introduction to race talk, because all people can be racist, asians can be racist, black people can be racist, whites can definitely be racist because we all have the power to be racist. We all have the power to be anti-racist. This book is a must-read for all Americans, and especially for the African Americans who have anti-black-thoughts, and especially for the majority of the whites, who think that they don't see color.

Reading Stats:

• Reading Date: 1/2/20 - 1/3/20

• Reading Level:

  • African American: 8th Grade Level

  • White Americans: Freshmen College Level

• Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notes:

• 5-10% What is racism - a marriage of racist policies and ideologies, that produces and normalizes racial inequalities?

  • Racial Inequality: when two or more racial groups that aren't standing in an approximately equal footing. Ex: 71 percent of white families live in owned homes in 2014, compared to 44 percent of African Americans, and Latinx.

  • Racial Equality: When the different racial groups would own similar percentages rather than having a 30 percent difference.

  • Racist Policy: Any policy that would reproduce racial Inequality based statistics.

  • Antiracist Policy: Any policy that would reproduce racial equality based statistics. And the strategy is written laws that rule the people.

  • Why use these terms rather than more abstract and overview based terms like systematic oppression? These terms are more tangible in understanding, especially for those who aren't normalized to these terms. Racist ideas: Any notion that says one group is better than another in any way.

• ANTIRACIST: One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity.”

  • “ASSIMILATIONIST: One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.

  • SEGREGATIONIST: One who is expressing the racist idea that a permanently inferior racial group can never be developed and is supporting policy that segregates away that racial group.

  • Since Reagan's agenda on "War on Drugs": from 1980 - 2000, 4x increase in the American prison population.

  • Whites are more likely than Black and Latinx to sell drugs.

  • African Americans are far more likely to be jailed than white Americans.

  • Non-violent Black drug offenders remain in prison for the same amount of time (58.87 months) as Violent white criminals (62.7 Month)

  • 2016, Black and Latinx people are grossly overrepresented in the prison population at 56%, while White People are grossly underrepresented at 30%. When looking at the national population of Black, Latinx, and White Americans, it's significantly off.

  • “Black people have often expressed a desire to be American and have been encouraged in this by America’s undeniable history of antiracist progress, away from chattel slavery and Jim Crow. Despite the cold instructions from the likes of Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal to “become assimilated into American culture,” Black people have also, as Du Bois said, desired to remain N*gro, discouraged by America’s undeniable history of racist progress, from advancing police violence and voter suppression, to widening racial inequities in areas ranging from health to wealth.”

  • “The White body defines the American body. The White body segregates the Black body from the American body. The White body instructs the Black body to assimilate into the American body. The White body rejects the Black body assimilating into the American body—and history and consciousness duel anew.”

  • “The Black body in turn experiences the same duel. The Black body is instructed to become an American body. The American body is the White body. The Black body strives to assimilate into the American body. The American body rejects the Black body. The Black body separates from the American body. The Black body is instructed to assimilate into the American body—and history and consciousness duel anew.”

  • “But there is a way to get free. To be antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness. To be antiracist is to conquer the assimilationist consciousness and the segregationist consciousness. The White body no longer presents itself as the American body; the Black body no longer strives to be the American body, knowing there is no such thing as the American body, only American bodies, racialized by power.”

• BIOLOGICAL ANTIRACIST: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences.”

  • “BIOLOGICAL RACIST: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value.

  • We often see and remember the race and not the individual. This is racist categorizing, this stuffing of our experiences with individuals into color-marked racial closets.

  • “Looking back, I wonder, if I had been one of her White kids would she have asked me: “What’s wrong?” Would she have wondered if I was hurting? I wonder. I wonder if her racist ideas chalked up my resistance to my Blackness and therefore categorized it as misbehavior, not distress. With racist teachers, misbehaving kids of color do not receive inquiry and empathy and legitimacy. We receive orders and punishments and “no excuses,” as if we are adults.

  • The Black child is ill-treated like an adult, and the Black adult is ill-treated like a child.”

  • “We practice ethnic racism when we express a racist idea about an ethnic group or support a racist policy toward an ethnic group. Ethnic racism, like racism itself, points to group behavior, instead of policies, as the cause of disparities between groups.”

  • “Where are you from?” - I am often asked this question by people who see me through the lens of ethnic racism. Their ethnic racism presumes I—a college professor and published writer—cannot be a so-called lowly, lazy, lackluster African American.
    ““Who do you think your fellow Ghanaian Americans got these ideas about African Americans from?” He thought much longer this time. From the side of his eye he saw another student waiting to speak to me, which seemed to rush his thoughts—he was a polite kid in spite of his urge to lecture. But I did not rush him. The other student was Jamaican and listening intently, maybe thinking about who Jamaicans got their ideas about Haitians from. “Probably American Whites,” he said, looking me straight in the eye for the first time.”

  • “Why are Black immigrants not doing as well as other immigrant groups? - The reason Black immigrants generally have higher educational levels and economic pictures than African Americans is not that their transnational ethnicities are superior. The reason resides in the circumstances of human migration. Not all individuals migrate, but those who do, in what’s called “immigrant self-selection,” are typically individuals with an exceptional internal drive for material success and/or they possess exceptional external resources. Generally speaking, individual Black and Latinx and Asian and Middle Eastern and European immigrants are uniquely resilient and resourceful—not because they are Nigerian or Cuban or Japanese or Saudi Arabian or German but because they are immigrants.”

  • “all they saw were our dangerous Black bodies. Cops seemed especially fearful. Just as I learned to avoid the Smurfs of the world, I had to learn to keep racist police officers from getting nervous. Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists. If we don’t, then we are blamed for our own assaults, our own deaths.”

  • The so-called “first Black president” followed suit. “It isn’t racist for Whites to say they don’t understand why people put up with gangs on the corner or in the projects or with drugs being sold in the schools or in the open,” said President Clinton in 1995. - Indeed, I was irresponsible in high school. It makes antiracist sense to talk about the personal irresponsibility of individuals like me of all races. I screwed up. I could have studied harder. But some of my White friends could have studied harder, too, and their failures and irresponsibility didn’t somehow tarnish their race. My problems with personal irresponsibility were exacerbated—or perhaps even caused—by the additional struggles that racism added to my school life, from a history of disinterested, racist teachers, to overcrowded schools, to the daily racist attacks that fell on young Black boys and girls.

  • -- while the White screwup is handed second chances and empathy. This shouldn’t be surprising: One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary

  • Black people. the Graduate Record Exam, or GRE. I had already forked over $1,000 for a preparatory course, feeding the U.S. test-prep and private tutoring industry that would grow to $12 billion in 2014 and is projected to reach $17.5 billion in 2020. The courses and private tutors are concentrated in Asian and White communities, who, not surprisingly, score the highest on standardized tests. My GRE prep course, for instance, was not taught on my historically Black campus. “The teacher was not making us stronger. She was giving us form and technique so we’d know precisely how to carry the weight of the test. It revealed the bait and switch at the heart of standardized tests—the exact thing that made them unfair: She was teaching test-taking form for standardized exams that purportedly measured intellectual strength.” Intellect is the linchpin of behavior, and the racist idea of the achievement gap is the linchpin of behavioral racism.

• COLORISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequities between Light people and Dark people, supported by racist ideas about Light and Dark people.

  • COLOR ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between Light people and Dark people, supported by antiracist ideas about Light and Dark people. Dark Black men regardless of qualifications? Even Dark Filipino men have lower incomes than their lighter peers in the United States. Dark immigrants to the United States, no matter their place of origin, tend to have less wealth and income than Light immigrants. When they arrive, Light Latinx people receive higher wages, and Dark Latinx people are more likely to be employed at ethnically homogeneous jobsites. “To be an antiracist is not to reverse the beauty standard. To be an antiracist is to eliminate any beauty standard based on skin and eye color, hair texture, facial and bodily features shared by groups.

  • To be an antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty like our standards of culture or intelligence, to see beauty equally in all skin colors, broad and thin noses, kinky and straight hair, light and dark eyes. To be an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty culture that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty.”

  • Skin-bleaching products were raking in millions for U.S. companies. In India, “fairness” creams topped $200 million in 2014. Today, skin lighteners are used by 70 percent of women in Nigeria; 35 percent in South Africa; 59 percent in Togo; and 40 percent in China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Korea.

  • 50% ANTI-WHITE RACIST: One who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race of White people with racist power.

  • When on December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped Florida’s recount, I no longer saw the United States as a democracy. When Gore conceded the next day, when White Democrats stood aside and let Bush steal the presidency on the strength of destroyed Black votes, I was shot back into the binary thinking of Sunday school, where I was taught about good and evil, God and the Devil. - this is similar to what we going through right now.

• To Be an Antiracist:

  • To be antiracist is to never mistake the global march of White racism for the global march of White people.

  • To be antiracist is to never mistake the antiracist hate of White racism for the racist hate of White people.

  • To be antiracist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are antiracist Whites and racist non-Whites.

  • To be antiracist is to see ordinary White people as the frequent victimizers of people of color and the frequent victims of racist power. Donald Trump’s economic policies are geared toward enriching White male power—but at the expense of most of his White male followers, along with the rest of us.

• Getting over Powerless Defense, „When a Black man stepped into the most powerful office in the world in 2009, his policies were often excused by apologists who said he didn’t have executive power. As if none of his executive orders were carried out, neither of his Black attorneys general had any power to roll back mass incarceration, or his Black national security adviser had no power. The truth is: Black people can be racist because Black people do have power, even if limited.“

  • But according to the theory that Black people can’t be racist because they lack power, Blackwell didn’t have the power to suppress Black votes. Remember, we are all either racists or antiracists.

• CLASS RACIST: One who is racializing the classes, supporting policies of racial capitalism against those race-classes, and justifying them by racist ideas about those race-classes. ANTIRACIST ANTICAPITALIST: One who is opposing racial capitalism.

  • Pathological people made the pathological ghetto, segregationists say. The pathological ghetto made pathological people, assimilationists say. To be antiracist is to say the political and economic conditions, not the people, in poor Black neighborhoods are pathological.

  • In losing focus on racist power, they fail to challenge anti-Black racist policies, which means those policies are more likely to flourish. Going after White people instead of racist power prolongs the policies harming Black life. In the end, anti-White racist ideas, in taking some or all of the focus off racist power, become anti-Black. In the end, hating White people becomes hating Black people.

  • White supremacist is code for anti-White, and White supremacy is nothing short of an ongoing program of genocide against the White race. In fact, it’s more than that: White supremacist is code for anti-human, a nuclear ideology that poses an existential threat to human existence.

  • This stereotype of the hopeless, defeated, unmotivated poor Black is without evidence. Recent research shows, in fact, that poor Blacks are more optimistic about their prospects than poor Whites are. Racist Black elites thought about low-income Blacks the way racist non-Black people thought about Black people. We thought we had more than higher incomes. We thought we were higher people.

  • “The N*gro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” Du Bois projected. “Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters.”

  • “In the forty years since Clark’s Dark Ghetto, dark had married ghetto in the chapel of inferiority and took her name as his own—the ghetto was now so definitively dark, to call it a dark ghetto would be redundant. Ghetto also became as much an adjective—ghetto culture, ghetto people—as a noun, loaded with racist ideas, unleashing all sorts of Black on Black crimes on poor Black communities.”

• SPACE RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to resource inequity between racialized spaces or the elimination of certain racialized spaces, which are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized spaces.

  • SPACE ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces, which are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized spaces.

  • “If we can’t be objective, then what should we strive to do?” She stared at me as she gathered her words. Not a woman of many words, it did not take long.

    “Just tell the truth. That’s what we should strive to do. Tell the truth.”

  • Mazama, she lectured on Asante’s contention that objectivity was really “collective subjectivity.” She concluded, “It is impossible to be objective.”

  • The idea of the dangerous Black neighborhood is the most dangerous racist idea. And it is powerfully misleading. For instance, people steer away from and stigmatize Black neighborhoods as crime-ridden streets where you might have your wallet stolen.

  • Americans lost trillions during the Great Recession, which was largely triggered by financial crimes of staggering enormity. Estimated losses from white-collar crimes are believed to be between $300 and $600 billion per year, according to the FBI. By comparison, near the height of violent crime in 1995, the FBI reported the combined costs of burglary and robbery to be $4 billion.

    • The argument: Black students are better served learning how to operate in a majority-White nation by attending a majority-White university.

    • The reality: A large percentage of—perhaps most—Black Americans live in majority-Black neighborhoods, work in majority-Black sites of employment, organize in majority-Black associations, socialize in majority-Black spaces, attend majority-Black churches, and send their children to majority-Black schools.

  • They are conceptualizing the real American world as White. To be antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as the “real world,” only real worlds, multiple worldviews. Why: unfairly comparing Black spaces to substantially richer White spaces. The endowment of the richest HBCU, Howard, was five times less than UT Austin’s endowment in 2016, never mind being thirty-six times less than the endowment of a Stanford or Yale.

    • HBCUs to HWCUs of similar means and makeup, HBCUs tend to have higher Black graduation rates. Not to mention, Black HBCU graduates are, on average, more likely than their Black peers from HWCUs to be thriving financially, socially, and physically.

  • When black people create space, they see spaces of White hate. They do not see spaces of cultural solidarity, of solidarity against racism. They see spaces of segregation against White people. Integrationists do not see these spaces as the movement of Black people toward Black people. Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people. They then equate that movement away from White people with the White segregationist movement away from Black people. Integrationists equate spaces for the survival of Black bodies with spaces for the survival of White supremacy.

  • Non-White students fill most of the seats in today’s public school classrooms but are taught by an 80 percent White teaching force, which often has, however unconsciously, lower expectations for non-White students. When Black and White teachers look at the same Black student, White teachers are about 40 percent less likely to believe the student will finish high school. Low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are 29 percent less likely to drop out of school, 39 percent less likely among very low-income Black boys.

  • White spaces that hoard public resources, include some non-Whites, and are generally, though not wholly, dominated by White peoples and cultures. White majorities, White power, and White culture dominate both the segregated and the integrated, making both White.

  • Integration had turned into “a one-way street,” a young Chicago lawyer observed in 1995. “The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around,” Barack Obama wrote. “Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial.” Integration (into Whiteness) became racial progress.

  • “Antiracist strategy fuses desegregation with a form of integration and racial solidarity. Desegregation: eliminating all barriers to all racialized spaces. To be antiracist is to support the voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural difference, a shared humanity. Integration: resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resource equity by challenging the racist policies that produce resource inequity. Racial solidarity: openly identifying, supporting, and protecting integrated racial spaces. To be antiracist is to equate and nurture difference among racial groups.”

  • But antiracist strategy is beyond the integrationist conception that claims Black spaces could never be equal to White spaces, that believes Black spaces have a “detrimental effect upon” Black people, to quote Chief Justice Warren in Brown. My Black studies space was supposed to have a detrimental effect on me. Quite the opposite. My professors made sure of that, as did two Black students, answering questions I never thought to ask.

• GENDER RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-genders and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-genders.

  • GENDER ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-genders and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-genders.

  • To be antiracist is to reject not only the hierarchy of races but of race-genders. To be feminist is to reject not only the hierarchy of genders but of race-genders. To truly be antiracist is to be feminist. To truly be feminist is to be antiracist. To be antiracist (and feminist) is to level the different race-genders, is to root the inequities between the equal race-genders in the policies of gender racism.

  • “The intersection of racism and sexism, in some cases, oppresses White women. For example, sexist notions of “real women” as weak and racist notions of White women as the idealized woman intersect to produce the gender-racist idea that the pinnacle of womanhood is the weak White woman.”

  • the opposite of the gender racism of the unvirtuous hypersexual Black woman is the virtuous asexual White woman, a racial construct that has constrained and controlled the White woman’s sexuality (as it nakedly tainted the Black woman’s sexuality as un-rape-able).

  • Gender racism is behind the thinking that when one defends White male abusers like Trump and Brett Kavanaugh one is defending White people; when one defends Black male abusers like Bill Cosby and R. Kelly one is defending Black people.

  • For example, sexist notions of “real men” as strong and racist notions of Black men as not really men intersect to produce the gender racism of the weak Black man, inferior to the pinnacle of manhood, the strong White man.

  • Sexist notions of men as more naturally dangerous than women (since women are considered naturally fragile, in need of protection) and racist notions of Black people as more dangerous than White people intersect to produce the gender racism of the hyperdangerous Black man, more dangerous than the White man, the Black woman, and (the pinnacle of innocent frailty) the White woman.

  • These ideas of gender racism transform every innocent Black male into a criminal and every White female criminal into Casey Anthony, the White woman a Florida jury exonerated in 2011, against all evidence, for killing her three-year-old child. White women get away with murder and Black men spend years in prisons for wrongful convictions.

• QUEER RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-sexualities.

  • QUEER ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-sexualities.

  • "I thought about this hypersexuality and recklessness causing so many Black gay men to contract HIV. I thought wrong. Black gay men are less likely to have condomless sex than White gay men. They are less likely to use drugs like poppers or crystal methamphetamine during sex, which heighten the risk of HIV infections."

  • I watched, stunned, in awe of their intellectual attacks. I call them attacks, but in truth they were defenses, defending Black womanhood and the humanity of queer Blacks. They were respectful and measured if the victimizer was respectful and measured with them. But I call them attacks because I felt personally attacked. They were attacking my gender racism about Black women, my queer racism about queer Blacks, my gender and queer racism about queer Black women.

Additional Reference Links:

• Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X Kendi

• New York Times reading list for How to be an Antiracist

• GSU’s reading list for this book

• Kendi’s Talk at UC Berkley

• Kendi’s Commencement Speech at U of F

Reid - Such a Fun Age

Author: Kiley Reid

Review:

This book was a blast to read through, with nontraditional modes of finishing, I wouldn't go further than that to avoid spoilers. What the main character goes through with her experience as a black woman, clashing that with the intersection of being poor, with a college education, was cringy to listen to. The writing is done terrifically well, with cringes that most of us minorities feel when we felt as though the world has been treating us like a second rate citizen. This is the truth, for Americans can be very racist, for most times the liberal white Americans are the worst when they know not what they are. Subconsciously racist towards those they think they are helping. And this is a conversation that isn't easy to make, it's a conversation that should have been talked about for the last three hundred years, yet it's always postponed. Over and over again, the concept of a race for those in power is just not there, and it's not our job to teach them.

It is not the minorities' job to teach what they ought to act, how they should work, no. It's their own job to join communities, it's their own job to join clubs, it's their own job to join or make or feel vulnerable. It's not our job as minorities, and this book shows that really well. For many, like this book presents in the best of ways, sometimes, the best answer is to move on.

There were many intersectional topics, as I've stated, from race to sex, sex and class, and lastly, race and class. All of those topics were also flushed out in a way that didn't feel unnatural. That's, Kiley shows us most rather than directly telling us everything. This made the world felt like a journey to walk with, with references to social media and the current gossips.

Lastly, the dialogues in here are real, they are real people with struggles, conflicts, souls. Kiley Reid did a fantastic job, and I look forward to more of her proclamation in the future.

Reading Stats:

• 1/8/20 - 1/9/20

• Reading Level: For minorities - Sophomore High School, or Sophomore College Level if you’ve never met a minority before.

• Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Publication Date: 2019

Quotes and Notes:

• * The main character was questioned by the security guard because she was nannying a child, and she's black.... so you know, white bs -- “He paused and ran his tongue over his front teeth. “Okay, that guy was a dick to you. Don’t you wanna get him fired?” Emira laughed and said, “For what?” She shifted in her heels and put her phone back in her purse. “So he can go to another grocery store and get some other nine-dollar-an-hour bullshit job? Please. I’m not tryna have people Google my name and see me lit, with a baby that isn’t mine, at a fucking grocery store in Washington Square.””

• * Emira didn’t mind reading or writing papers, but this was also mostly the problem. Emira didn’t love doing anything, but she didn’t terribly mind doing anything either.

• * But Emira wiped the toddler’s chin and said, “That’s a really good question. We should ask your mom.” She honestly meant it. Emira wished that someone would tell her what she liked doing best. The number of things she could ask her own mother were shrinking at an alarming rate.

• * Emira was once followed by sales associates in Brooks Brothers while she shopped for a Father’s Day gift (her mother had said, “They ain’t got nothin’ better to do?”). And once, after a bikini wax was completed, Emira was told that because she had “ethnic texture,” the total came to forty dollars instead of the advertised thirty-five (to this, Emira’s mother had responded, “Back up, you got what waxed?”).

• * But more than the racial bias, the night at Market Depot came back to her with a nauseating surge and a resounding declaration that hissed, You don’t have a real job. This wouldn’t have happened if you had a real fucking job, Emira told herself on the train ride home, her legs and arms crossed on top of each other. You wouldn’t leave a party to babysit. You’d have your own health insurance. You wouldn’t be paid in cash. You’d be a real fucking person.

• * They had nothing interesting to say, their eyes had dead, creepy stares, and they were modest in a way that seemed weirdly rehearsed (Emira often watched Briar approach other toddlers on swings and slides, and they’d turn away from her, saying, “No, I’m shy”). Other children were easy audiences who loved receiving stickers and hand stamps, whereas Briar was always at the edge of a tiny existential crisis.

• * great writing of sex and consent!! “Uh-huh.” Emira laughed once as she moved forward to undo his belt buckle. “You’re like . . . really smart.” --“Okay, miss.” Kelley laughed. “I’m just making sure.”--In between strokes and kisses, Kelley pulled out a condom and placed it on the couch cushion to his left. It sat there like a peace offering or a panic button; a plastic symbol of consent. At one point, he lifted her hips and told her, “Sit up for me,” before he pressed her pelvic bone to his mouth. Emira said what she recognized as a very white expression, “Oh, you don’t have to . . .” By this she meant, I’d rather not return the favor when you’re done. Kelley seemed to understand her appeal. He laughed and said, “I know,” before he took her in his mouth again. He stopped once more to say, “Unless you’re not cool with it,” to which Emira quickly replied, “No, I am.” She balanced her hands and one knee on the back of the couch. For the second time that night she thought, You know what? Fuck it, and she took hold of the back of his head.-- On her way back down Emira reached for the condom. That she stayed on top seemed implicit and implied.

• * amazing writing of platonic relationship: Alix had developed feelings toward Emira that weren’t completely unlike a crush. She became excited to hear Emira’s key in the door, she felt disappointed when it was time for her to leave, and when Emira laughed or spoke without being prompted, Alix felt like she had done something right. The times when this happened were few and far between, which was why Alix kept peeking at her sitter’s cell phone. She would have just checked Emira’s social media channels instead, but from what she’d gathered from searching, Emira didn’t have any.

• * which Alix administered with one hand. “Are you a wine person or no?”

  “I mean, I like it,” Emira said. She set her glass at the other end of the table, then took the books from underneath her arm and set those down too. “But I’m used to drinking like . . . boxed wine, so yeah, I’m no connoisseur.” — There were moments like this that Alix tried to breeze over, but they got stuck somewhere between her heart and ears. She knew Emira had gone to college. She knew Emira had majored in English. But sometimes, after seeing her paused songs with titles like “Dope Bitch” and “Y’all Already Know,” and then hearing her use words like connoisseur, Alix was filled with feelings that went from confused and highly impressed to low and guilty in response to the first reaction. There was no reason for Emira to be unfamiliar with this word. And there was no reason for Alix to be impressed. Alix completely knew these things, but only when she reminded herself to stop thinking them in the first place.

• * !!“I don’t care so much. Okay, listen . . .” Kelley sipped the top layer of his beer and bent his head lower to speak to her. “Emira . . . the fact that Alex sent you to a grocery store with her kid at eleven p.m. makes a lot more sense now. You’re not the first black woman Alex has hired to work for her family, and you probably won’t be the last.” -- "Okay . . . ?” Emira sat down. She didn’t mean to sound flippant, but she doubted that Kelley could really tell her anything she didn’t already know. Emira had met several “Mrs. Chamberlains” before. They were all rich and overly nice and particularly lovely to the people who served them. Emira knew that Mrs. Chamberlain wanted a friendship, but she also knew that Mrs. Chamberlain would never display the same efforts of kindness with her friends as she did with Emira: “accidentally” ordering two salads and offering one to Emira, or sending her home with a bag filled with frozen dinners and soups. It wasn’t that Emira didn’t understand the racially charged history that Kelley was alluding to, but she couldn’t help but think that if she weren’t working for this Mrs. Chamberlain, she’d probably be working for another one.

• * “Okay, first of all?” Emira turned to him. She threw her coat over her arm and held it close. “You don’t get to tell me where I should and shouldn’t work. You literally have a cafeteria in your office. You wear T-shirts to work. And you have a doorman, Kelley, okay? So you can one thousand percent go fuck yourself. The fact that you think you’re better than A-leeks or Alex or whatever is a joke. You will never have to even consider working somewhere that requires a uniform, so you can chill the fuck out about how I choose to make my living. And second of all? You were so fucking rude in there! At a Thanksgiving dinner!”

• * Emira and Kelley talked about race very little because it always seemed like they were doing it already. When she really considered a life with him, a real life, a joint-bank-account-emergency-contact-both-names-on-the-lease life, Emira almost wanted to roll her eyes and ask, Are we really gonna do this? How are you gonna tell your parents? If I’d walked in here when they were still on the screen, how would you have introduced me? Are you gonna take our son to get his hair done? Who’s gonna teach him that it doesn’t matter what his friends do, that he can’t stand too close to white women when he’s on the train or in an elevator? That he should slowly and noticeably put his keys on the roof as soon as he gets pulled over? Or that there are times our daughter should stand up for herself, and times to pretend it was a joke that she didn’t quite catch. Or that when white people compliment her (“She’s so professional. She’s always on time”), it doesn’t always feel good, because sometimes people are gonna be surprised by the fact that she showed up, rather than the fact that she had something to say when she did.

• * Back in high school, Kelley wanted status, and at Alix’s expense, that’s what he’d got. But what did Kelley think he was getting from Emira? How many times had he proudly told the story of how they met? Acting performatively flustered and suggesting that he shouldn’t have? As she sat on the ledge of her bathtub, Alix’s iPad became so warm that it started to burn her legs.

• * On her own and at her best, Briar was odd and charming, filled with intelligence and humor. But there was something about the actual work, the practice of caring for a small unstructured person, that left Emira feeling smart and in control. There was the gratifying reflex of being good at your job, and even better was the delightful good fortune of having a job you wanted to be good at. Without Briar, there were all these markers of time that would come to mean nothing. Was Emira just supposed to exist on her own at six forty-five? Knowing that somewhere else it was Briar’s bathtime? One day, when Emira would say good-bye to Briar, she’d also leave the joy of having somewhere to be, the satisfaction of understanding the rules, the comfort of knowing what’s coming next, and the privilege of finding a home within yourself.

Reference Links:

• Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people

• It's Not Our Job: An Open Letter To Well-Meaning White People Who Might Be Racist But Aren't Sure

• 12 Books to Keep Your Feminism IntersectionalarXiv.org Free publication papers archive that was referenced.

• Movie Recommendations:

  • The Hate U Give