... I try really hard not to write dumb things. I cannot speak for Mr. Brooks. - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life.

I was just a black girl, a little long in the tooth, but still in my mind just a black girl writing. Black girls do not cause problems for powerful white women or august professional publications or public discourse. 3 Black girls have not, for most of my understanding of our history in this nation, had the power to cause those kinds of problems. Black girls and black women are problems. That is not the same thing as causing problems. We are social issues to be solved, economic problems to be balanced, and emotional baggage to be overcome.

Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs.