First of all, if you've never read Jen's 2011 feature "Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race," you need to do that now. If you don't have time right now, you need to do it over Fourth of July weekend. It's an amazing piece of writing, and it begins with this striking moment from an art history lesson Graves was trying to give at Cornish College of the Arts:

One day in front of a class of art history students at Cornish College of the Arts, I say, "Raise your hand if you're a racist." I hadn't planned on this.

That class period I was focusing on James Baldwin and Glenn Ligon, both gay men, both African American, and it hit me that because there wasn't a black person in the room, things were getting abstract. This art is valuable and has to be taught—there really is no arguing against Baldwin, and Ligon's painting Black Like Me #2 was one of the first President Obama brought to the White House—but how do you teach someone to have a relationship to it?

So I throw it out there: Raise your hand if you're a racist.

As my students do that thing where they sort of just look at you, perplexed, I raise my own hand. I am deeply embarrassed, but I feel I have to be honest if I am asking them to be.

Like I said, you must read this essay.

Anyway, NPR recently included Jen in this segment about white people talking about racism: