I had benignly accepted that I live within the glow of white privilege, and that racism existed everywhere outside of the bubble in which I live, but I certainly never truly understood the \u00a0grinding lived experience of it. It\u2019s very likely that I never will, but I started to pay closer attention after Michael Brown was killed, watching video after video of interactions between police officers and black men, and listening to voices within the black community recounting their realities on Twitter, and the picture that formed before me was vivid, consistent and utterly heartbreaking. A pounding, demoralizing racism is plain for all to see, and make no mistake, a new civil rights movement is emerging in the US right now– people are waking up, and it’s beautiful and humbling to see.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n White people don\u2019t like to believe that they practice identity politics. The defining part of being white in America is the assumption that, as a white person, you are a regular, individual human being. Other demographic groups set themselves apart, to pursue their distinctive identities and interests and agendas. Whiteness, to white people, is the American default.<\/p>\n -Tom Scocca<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can\u2019t go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who\u2019s sniffing cocaine.<\/p>\n -Noam Chomsky<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.<\/p>\n -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie<\/p>\n