We are agents of our world, right?

And so, you know, we encounter tragedy after tragedy,

after tragedy, and so then we can become sort of passive witnesses

to all of these tragedies in our midst,

or we can be actively engaged.

And I think that's a process of liberating oneself

to be actively engaged in the world

and in the work of transforming it.

James Baldwin once said that American history

is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful,

and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

These words inspired Imani Perry when she wrote her scholarly book,

More Beautiful and More Terrible,

The Embrace and Transcendence of racial inequality in the United States.

Imani Perry acknowledges wise voices

who say that we will never get to the promised land of racial equality.

She writes,

That may very well be true,

but it is also true that extraordinary things

have happened and keep happening in our history.

The question is,

how do we prepare for and precipitate them?

...