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Author Insight
To stay in the ring
What does it mean to try and change racial prejudice? A friend once told me it meant to "stay in the ring." People of color can't leave the fight, white people can. It is tempting for us to jump in and out of the fight at our convenience. If we truly believe in racial equality, we need to be willing to stay in the fight and find ways to advocate for/with our friends.
Book Excerpt
Cracker
She looked around the faces at the table and wasn’t sure what to say. “I’ve been reading about the abolitionists. There were black ones, of course, but there were also white ones, before the Great White Sickness. The black ones made sense, they were brave and took great risks, sure, but their only choice, before the rebellion, was slavery. It’s the whites that surprised me. They had lots of choices. They could choose to keep owning slaves or they could not own slaves and stay silent about slavery. But some went beyond that and defied their families, their employers, even their pastors to work to end slavery. You see the black people were in the fight, you know . . . like in boxing, they were in the ring, and they couldn’t get out. But the white people chose to stay in the ring and fight alongside them, as if it was their fight, too. Since I’m white, I have to stay in the ring, I don’t have many options. I guess it just took me a while to realize that you guys are trying to stay in the ring with me, and I keep trying to push you out.”
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