As a poet, I have always treated English as a weapon in a power struggle, wielding it against those who are more powerful than me. But I falter when … - Cathy Park Hong

Racial self-hatred is seeing yourself the way the whites see you, which turns you into your own worst

I’d rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life is to be held accountable to history.

Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.