There's an enormous amount of obliviousness: a desire among young gentrifiers to see only the city they want to see.

Disguising your own origins is a deeply American impulse, but that doesn't make it any less compromising. The way I live my life is to try to foreground the tensions and paradoxes of being a white person who's interested in racial justice and reconciliation, rather than disguise or obliterate them.

It's difficult for me to imagine a circumstance in which you're disguising your origins in which someone doesn't get hurt.

Jess Row Quotes