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Zadie smith intimations6/5/2023 ![]() ![]() More than that, though, it masterfully captures many Black Americans’ pain and disorientation at having the white world begin to register en masse what James Baldwin termed the “dread, chronic disease” of racism in 1955. ![]() Intimations mirrors many white Americans’ shift from the stasis of quarantine to the sudden, incandescent rage of injustice. It’s worth reading the paragraph in full, if only to get a glimpse at the depth of Smith’s hard-earned exhaustion. I don’t think that anymore,” Smith concludes, devastatingly. I thought if that knowledge became as widespread as could possibly be managed or imagined that we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. “I used to think that there would one day be a vaccine: that if enough Black people named the virus, explained it, demonstrated how it operates, videoed its effects. Titled “Contempt as a Virus”, Smith’s essay skilfully and effectively relates the virus currently plaguing America to the one that has killed and brutalised scores of Black people since the country’s founding: structural racism. ![]()
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