Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.

Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity, from racism, from whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn’t just race that was a social construct. So was I.

The system of white supremacy is intended to make folks of color doubt themselves, their intelligence, their abilities, their very sanity. And so it's important to remember that folks of color know their own realities.

There won't be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won't be any more white folks around who actually remember them.

So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe.

After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.