December 7, 2012
"

The (aborted) threat didn’t scare me as much as my immediate response. I was very angry, and what I wanted, more than anything, in that moment, was for the car to stop, and for one of them to approach me. Then I would bash that kids head in with my bike lock.

That was a really stupid idea.

The man in me knows how macho imaginings usually outstrip reality. He also knows that this may not have even been a threat. He further knows that kids, in general, do dumb shit. But that wasn’t the man in me talking. It wasn’t the father who knows he needs to be around for his child. It wasn’t the husband, who knows his wife is back in New York depending on him. It wasn’t the writer who hopes that his best words are still in front of him. It was some little boy who got jumped repeatedly more than two decades ago, back in West Baltimore, and his spent the rest of his days just “wishing a nigger would,” as my people say.

That boy is a damn fool.

"

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the seductive dream of standing your ground.

4:27pm
(Notes: 185)
  
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