Who Will Survive in America?

"I won’t get shot in the back on the street. I’m a half-Chinese, half-Korean girl with a book in my purse. I’ve got my hands in my pockets all the time, and I know no one’s looking twice. Most of the time I’m glaring so hard at everyone who walks by me that I probably should be stopped by the police, but it’s only because I learned a long time ago that if I don’t, eventually some white boy in a baseball cap is gonna look me up and down and ask if I can love him long time.

But forty years ago my parents were yelled at, spat on, beat up—if I complain about the identity assigned to me, of violins and math problems and tinkling laughter, I feel guilty right away. Violence is tricky like that: it morphs and slides and molds around your scars. It stays white, though, most of the time. Whether police baton or verdict or pale fingers pulling blue eyes into slits, it stays white."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/12/16/who-will-survive-in-america/

A beautifully written series of vignettes on race in America today. I wonder if the Prince would ever publish this - maybe in the opinion section.

Related: the This American Life episodes on Katrina, that made me see race in America really differently, and add another level of terror for me about apocalypse scenarios that everyone I know is slightly convinced will eventually happen. I think that was around the time I decided that I should actually try to listen to rap and hiphop instead of being distantly scared of it.