Temple Folk

Somehow, learning about this filled me with rage. This outcome unveiled a disregard of reality so profound that even I—someone who had suffered at the hands of this man—found it absurd. And the truth we all failed to acknowledge was this: organized Black hate was neither harmless nor trivial. James knew that; I knew that—but its large-scale victims were not white. They were we—the children of the nation, and all our forebears who led us to their ranks.

I felt a tug of something on seeing them, but I wasn’t sure which side of my thinking was pulling harder—the side that said by heading home I was doing the right thing, or the side that said the home I claimed up North was never really mine in the first place, too much flash and not enough soul.

Somehow, learning about this filled me with rage. This outcome unveiled a disregard of reality so profound that even I—someone who had suffered at the hands of this man—found it absurd. And the truth we all failed to acknowledge was this: organized Black hate was neither harmless nor trivial. James knew that; I knew that—but its large-scale victims were not white. They were we—the children of the nation, and all our forebears who led us to their ranks.

I felt a tug of something on seeing them, but I wasn’t sure which side of my thinking was pulling harder—the side that said by heading home I was doing the right thing, or the side that said the home I claimed up North was never really mine in the first place, too much flash and not enough soul.