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In recent years, the police have been called on Black people for ridiculously ordinary things -- birding while Black, shopping while Black, golfing (too slowly) while Black, riding in a car with a white grandmother while Black, delivering newspapers while Black, even trying to cash a paycheck while Black.
Writing while Black is now putting authors at risk. Our books -- fiction and nonfiction -- are being banned as part of a conservative movement to quash teaching and the discussion of racism in America. With a "hate the book, hate the writer" ethos taking hold, suddenly, threats are being made against us.
Never could I have imagined that being an author might place me in harm's way. No writer should face danger for reporting on historical truths or writing fictional accounts that tell the stories of historically marginalized communities. Yet those of us writing while Black often do.
Dozens of Black authors have had their books pulled from school libraries under the pretext that we're teaching "critical race theory," which can be simply defined as offering an intellectual framework to discuss how systemic racism in America was consciously created and, therefore, needs to be consciously dismantled.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The 1619 Project," was targeted by the Trump White House, was second-guessed by historians and was racially harassed and received death threats for her examination of the history of racism in America. The backlash was led by Republicans who used fears of critical race theory as a...