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What to expect when you're expecting racism

Part of the punchline of the book is that black people can't purchase an escape from racism. We can't buy ourselves out of anti-blackness in the US. Moreover, black people know this.

Fresh Air

Have we been reading Toni Morrison all wrong?

Morrison is one of the incredible thinkers and theorists of racism as a pathology. And when she describes what it is to be racist, she's very insistent that this is a problem of the racist. This isn't actually a problem of the black person.

Fresh Air

Have we been reading Toni Morrison all wrong?

You can spend all your time trying to prove that we are humans, that we had a civilization, that we have art, that we have culture. But it's a distraction because there's always going to be one more thing. And actually, the problem is not us. The problem is the racist who has no other way of feeling full, no other way of having integrity other than putting someone else down.