History – America’s history, the world’s history – would slip in and out of my consciousness with no resonance whatsoever. It was because he kept calling me that thing: “white American”. I only thought about finding myself, becoming myself, discovering myself – and this, I hadn’t known, was the most white American thing of all. My lack of consciousness allowed me to believe I was innocent, or that white American was not an identity like Muslim or Turk. I was a white American.

Source: The Guardian August 08, 2017 05:01 UTC