Kkk i quit meme11/14/2023 Speaking, I knew even back then, would have meant being shut out of that world. I, as the first-generation child of refugees, had only the brains and work ethic my parents had gifted me, but which were enough to secure me a tenuous place. As second- and third-generation legacies, scions of generational wealth and cultural capital, they had power and access. He and I worked on independent film projects together for years, attended the same parties where offers were extended both my summer internship and the housing situation for that internship were landed because of this group of friends. He was part of the central group of the privileged, popular, and powerful in my predominantly white university-the kids whose parents’ money or connections already made them players in the careers to which the rest of us aspired. Instead, I remained silent, and we remained friends. When I asked which one, since we were the same major and in nearly all the same classes that year at Northwestern, he muttered that it was something to do with his fraternity, and that he had to go. Then, at my shocked expression, he said it was for a class project. He blushed, as he began to register how he appeared to me, and said it was for a joke. But, unlike him, I was unable to carry off a nonchalant conversation, and I asked him what he was doing with all that. He saw me and stopped to talk, so I had to stop as well. He was in full regalia: the sheet covering the entirety of his body, the rope tied around his waist ready for lynching, the eye-slitted hood carried under his arm. Some time into my studies at university, as I was walking up the avenue that cut between the green fields of east campus and the wide blue of Lake Michigan, headphones in my ears and daydreaming about something or other, I came across a white classmate who was a rather good friend of mine striding along in a KKK costume. There will always be one more thing.” - Toni Morrison Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.
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