Americans have, at this juncture in our history, become accustomed to conducting our most painful reckonings in public. The balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Dealey Plaza, the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, and a forsaken driveway in Mississippi occupy a profane corner in the minds of a generation of Americans. Yet the geography of conflict extends well beyond the locales where Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Medgar Evers perished. There are lesser-known addresses: the street corner where residents are routinely stopped and frisked, the side of the road where a driver is detained for a minor violation. These are the less visible conflicts that cumulatively become something volatile.
Jelani Cobb, “Flash Points” (via newyorker)