There is a moment where Als points out his internal struggles with homophobia on top of racial discrimination. “I don’t remember exactly how many times we moved; in those days, my focus was on trying to win people over, the better to protect my family, or—silently—trying to fend off homophobia, the better to protect myself. My being a “f*ggot” was one way for other people to feel better about themselves. My being a “f*ggot” let cops know what they weren’t.” I feel like this quote partly reflects back on another point he made in the article about why young black boys and men felt the need to challenge their mothers’ ideas of silence to maintain peace and safety, which he believed stemmed from masculinity and their strive to reject an idea that seemed feminine. I think that Als’ inclusion of his internalized homophobia amidst the Civil Rights Movement is to show that even in his own various communities where everyone knew each other and every child belonged to the neighborhood, he lived in fear of burdening his family, particularly his mother, further, because not only was he black, but he was also queer, and he felt as if his black peers could use his homosexuality and therefore lack of “masculinity” to make themselves feel better about their own challenges with discrimination.

A quote that stood out to me while reading was when he mentioned his white, gay best friend who had died from AIDS. “The image of my late best friend…being beaten up outside a gay Asian club he was exiting, and me asking later, when he showed up with blood on his jacket, if he’d called the police, and him staring me dead in the eye and saying, ‘Why bother?'” This quote interested me in particular because it displays the helplessness that minorities feel. The helplessness of being beaten so badly and not feeling like you can turn to the people who are supposed to protect you.

In one quote, he says: “Standing by my mother’s living-room window, I tried, tentatively, to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look: Boy, be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seemed to say.” This one stood out to me because there are times in the article where Als questions his mother’s motives and the need to remain silent and peaceful while facing racism, which reminds me of the way many POC feel amidst our current social climate. White people will shame looting, rioting, and talking back to their oppressors, so are black people supposed to just take all the abuse they receive? Black people are told that they’re supposed to, essentially, be the bigger person, but that seems so much easier said than done when POC live in constant fear of false charges and people with authority. There’s no solid answer for the right way to go about facing discrimination, but it’s a shame that POC continue to be forced into silence to make sure they don’t end up like “another Richard Ross, one of the hundred or thousand Richard Rosses out there.”