When we perform some existential service to men, to capital, to political power, to white women, and even to other “people of color” who are marginal… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Repeatedly people have said to me in their own way, from within their own stratified statuses, that I need to believe I am beautiful or can become beautiful — not for my own benefit, but because it serves so many others.

Here is where anyone who does not look white or black will find me ridiculous. Such people are asked all the time where they are from. People ask the question of persons whose physical or cultural presentation disrupts the questioner’s intuitive understanding of race. Black people do not have blue eyes — where are you from? Asians are from China and Japan, but you are brown — where are you from? You are blond but you are speaking Spanish, which is what Mexicans speak — where are you from? The question is not strange for its being asked, but for its being asked of me. My entire life I have had absolutely no gap between how I perceive myself and how the world perceives me. I identify as exactly what I look like I am. It is a kind of privilege in a world where conforming to somatic expectations of race, gender, and sexuality minimizes invasions of your privacy and property. But it is a complicated privilege

Too much small talk is how a country is given to sociopaths who thrive on shallow chatter to distract their emotional sleight of hand. Talk should be meaningful and kept to a minimum.