This too

Some thoughts about my reaction to One Day, not the book itself. There is a part of me—let’s call it “red hot and righteous” after a book title that has never left my mind after seeing it in a used bookstore; let’s shorten that to RHAR and pronounce it rahhrrrr!—that demands that I “do something” in response. Let’s be fair to RHAR: that part of me has done some good work. The work might not be quite so impressive as a big city activist’s resume, but it’s respectable for an introverted guy who has lived his whole life in deep red, small town Indiana. So, RHAR, I hear you. I appreciate the way you’ve pushed me in uncomfortable ways in the past. But I also want to remind you that you’ve hurt people that didn’t need to be hurt. No, now listen, I know you thought they were racist. Allow me to remind you of our teenage years when you wrote your own hateful letters to the editor of the local paper. Feeling angry is not the same thing as being right. You have always been and will always be an…