We Can’t Ignore Racism and White Supremacy
Counterprotests combatting the recent Ku Klux Klan rallies in North Carolina show that silence is not an option
While standing at a crosswalk waiting for the traffic light signal to change, I watched as a van pulled up beside me with its side door flung open. A group of white men emerged from inside, their fists wrapped around hockey sticks as they screamed in my face, “Nigger!” Within seconds, one of them hopped out of the van and began pacing toward me. I turned and ran away as fast as I could. I was just 12 years old at the time.
Ever since that day, I have thought about dying. Just hours before the attack, I had traveled by city bus from a chocolate hood in Detroit to a vanilla suburb with the best library. I was a child, yet I felt the full weight of centuries of racial terror. I was even too scared to ask for help from the library’s all-white staff.
This fear would change my life, but from then on I was on a path to courage. I was not going to let white supremacy keep me away from an excellent library and learning. It is why we say “Forward Together, Not One Step Back.”
Over the last several months, however, instigators of hate have attempted to impede that progress. In early August, a 21-year-old white male from…
