"I felt the tug on my sleeve and looked down to find him standing motionless. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out his words. His quiet body in the noisy room caught me off guard. I bent down to find his voice."
"I’ve made fun of her, calling her names—so many names. Fat. Ugly. Worthless...I was ashamed of her, ready to move on and live the rest of my life pretending she didn’t exist."
I don’t know what difference I can make today to alleviate the suffering of others, or to shift the American system toward justice and equality. But I think the first steps, as a white man unfamiliar with deep generational suffering, is to apologize and repent.