In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the racial divisions in America and the idea that being American is often linked to being white.
Toni Morrison's quote speaks to the insidious nature of racial identity in America, where the default identity of 'American' is predominantly associated with whiteness. This exclusionary viewpoint implies that people of color must always qualify their identity by hyphenating itβsuch as African-American, Asian-American, etc.βthus revealing the systemic inequalities and barriers that exist within the national narrative.
In practice
During a lecture on race relations in America, this quote can be used to emphasize conversations about identity.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.
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