The elderly white woman periodically topped up our wine glasses. When she decided we were sufficiently lubricated, she turned the conversation to race, specifically African Americans. “They need to get over it,” she announced, repeating with added vehemence, “Get over it.”
That conversation has been reverberating in my head as I’ve been looking at street art in the aftermath of the killing of a black man, George Floyd, in South Minneapolis. To this day, I’ve no idea what her agenda was: to piss me off, or to educate me in the ways of “decent white people.”
