Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing -- myself. Here was the lesson: I was not innocent. My impulses were not filled with unfailing virtue. And feeling that I was human as anyone, this must be true for other humans. If I was not innocent, then they were not innocent. Could this mix of motivation also affect the stories they tell? The cities they built? The country they claimed as given to them by God?
( Ta-Nehisi Coates )
[ Between the World and Me ]
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