I think these two pages, or page and a half, were some of the best stuff I've read all year,

where what you do is you place two statements in contrast to each other, both of which are being

promulgated by people who are concerned about the power differential, but they are intellectually

in opposition to each other. The catechism of contradictions, that's right. Yes, it's, so for example,

show interest in multiculturalism, very reasonable. Do not culturally appropriate when it is not your

culture, it is not for you and you may not try it or do it. You stay at what? And so it's like, okay,

I'm supposed to show an interest, and yet if I somehow go too far, then I will be in guilt of

something. Right. Mimicate, right. Silence about racism is violence. It's like, okay, I need to say

something, and then elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own, which is like, look, I can't say

anything unless I am of the oppressed class. And some people say it's a happy medium, just don't

say too much, but the thing is it's so easy to be called saying too much. Where is that medium?

Nobody has ever allowed to strike it. Exactly. You must strive eternally to understand the

experiences of black people. You can never understand what it is to be black. And if you think you do

your racist, if you think you get it. Right. Yes. So you can see why people are kind of like

tiptoeing, hot potatoing through this so that these statements, it is to me, maybe the most

powerful one, black people cannot be held accountable for everything every black person does. I would agree.

All whites must acknowledge their personal complicitiveness and the perfect of whiteness

throughout history. And it's different because of power. And so if you have power, then you're all

complicit. You don't have power. Everything is individual. Yeah. Who said, it doesn't make any sense?

Again, and maybe it's because I've been around the country, but like that Iowa farmer and the

diner would be like, you're complicit. Like I've been sitting here at the cornfields for

generations. Like, I know what the hell did I do? This week on Forward, we welcome Columbia

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