Quotes
Western Europeans had long been aware of the American paradox of proclaiming liberty for all men while holding subsets of its citizenry in near total subjugation. The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville toured antebellum America in the 1830s and observed that only the “surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint.”
On the other side of monotony lies a flow state, a way of being that is just being, a present tense that actually feels present.
Most white Americans can only understand racial trauma as a spectacle. Right after Trump’s election, the media reported on the uptick in hate crimes, tending to focus on the obvious heretical displays of hate: the white high school students parading down the hallways wearing Confederate flag capes and the graffitied swastikas. What’s harder to report is not the incident itself but the stress of its anticipation. The white reign of terror can be invisible and cumulative, chipping away at one’s worth until there’s nothing left but self-loathing.