Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race when those views are reinforced by systems of power.

I would be having a good day, lost in my imagination, and bam -- I'd be hit with a comment that would remind me that I was not allowed to get comfortable.

And if you are white in a white supremacist society, you are racist. If you are male in a patriarchy, you are sexist. If you are able-bodied, you are ableist. If you are anything above poverty in a capitalist society, you are classist. You can sometimes be all of these things at once.” You do, as Walt Whitman said, contain multitudes.

But those who demand the smoking gun of a racial slur or swastika or burning cross before they will believe that an individual encounter with the police might be about race are ignoring what we know and what the numbers are bearing out: something is going on and it is not right. We are being targeted.

You can’t ‘get over’ something that is still happening. Which is why black Americans can’t ‘get over’ slavery or Jim Crow.

You can’t ‘get over’ something that is still happening. Which is why black Americans can’t ‘get over’ slavery or Jim Crow. It may be quite a while—likely past all of our lifetimes—before white people will be able to say ‘nigger’ without harming black people.

It is not your job as a person of color to educate people on their racist actions . . . but it is always your right to stand up for yourself when you choose to.

In order for a police force to be effective, it has to earn the trust of its people. But to those who only scratch the surface, to those who do not investigate their simplistic opinions about the root cause of crime in inner cities and the animosity between police forces and communities of color, the answer is simply more policing. But what we need is different policing. Policing not steeped from root to flower in the need to control people of color.

Conversations on racism should never be about winning.