3
Show Respect
IN 2003, A JOURNALIST named Katherine Rosman went to a fancy New York publishing party. She ended up talking to one of the few Black men there—they both were outsiders at the party and didn’t know many other attendees.
The man turned out to be so charismatic and so interesting that she took down his information so she could pitch a story about him.
Not long after that conversation, another party guest, an established author, pulled her aside and asked who the man was. When she asked why, the author said something like, “I thought he was a waiter, and asked him to get me a drink from the bar.”
(The phrase she reports him using is actually “fetch a drink.” But the word fetch is so very loaded when it comes to Black Americans that ...
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