I don't think of rejection as rejection, just a bad fit. Then I seek out other avenues of acceptance.

Nowadays we can sidestep traditional media with social media and technology that allows us to become citizen journalists, to fight against injustice by showing what's shamefully going on.

I look at my kids, who were born under a Black president, who hop around the living room naked and joyful, mimicking Simone Biles, and just think, Damn, they got some amazing role models of Black excellence.

I felt saddened and confused to discover my favorite mural gone, but also hopeful that another one may be in the works. Street art is mysterious and impermanent like that. It can appear or disappear overnight. Murals like these are at risk of desecration, transformation, erasure. Someone's gonna piss on it, draw a mustache on it, tag it. The weather's going to make it fade. That's part of the beauty, I think. Murals have value without being precious.

Your average white liberal might agree with social justice in principle, and yet live quite comfortably as a "winner" in a nation whose social institutions - characterized by political exclusion, exploitation, and unequal access to resources - have systematically made others lose out. But here's the thing. Maybe it's time to get uncomfortable and upset. Maybe those feelings can be acted upon.

It matters when public officials admit that their hearts have changed, but only in the service of changing actual policy.

I don't think of rejection as rejection, just a bad fit. Then I seek out other avenues of acceptance.