When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Monster

This could be the fate of America’s children if we stop doing equity work.

Was it a fever? The heat came from the middle of my back and squeezed my shoulders. It descended my arm and came out through my now sweaty palms. I did not feel ill this morning. My nails dug into my skin as I inhaled deeply. I was not sick. This was not an illness. This was fear. 

For the first time, I saw a monster up close.

It was personal. He sat right next to me. He smelled ordinary and looked normal—wearing a plaid shirt, khaki pants, and brown loafers. 

The growl and rasp were both calm and coolly immoral. His account quietly deafened the other speakers, the wrestling of paper, and the background music. It sucked the sound from the room. The air did not tremble. The walls did not shake. My elbows and knees locked. He was using words I knew and words I understood, but I could hear the breaking of glass, the crumbling of stones, and the screams. I could hear the screams. 

I took offense to his normalcy and commonality. His presence was a flat line in the pulse of the conversation—not elevated or depressed, just there. 

It was in this conversation that this monster confessed that as a child, he and his best friend would play a game where they’d set bombs in front of black people’s homes and driveways. 

Bombs. Game. Fun. Dynamite. Blood. Bombs. Game. Fun. 

I wanted to say, “What in the holy hell did you just say?” but could not. 

In less than 3 minutes, the laments of the living came out of his body—the charred black flesh. Scraped feet and knees scrambling for shelter, maimed bodies, busted and broken glass, broken toys, black legs ripped off in a routine trip to the mailbox, torn eardrums from a proximate explosion, pierced eyes from shards of glass.

There was blood. I did not know what to do with this carnage; it was hard to breathe. Death sounded merciful. 

Terror wears the face of normalcy.

This was not 1915, 1955, or 1995. It was 2014 in Mississippi. I was in training, learning the skills, talk processes, and structures to hold space for monsters to become human. In other words, I was in training to do equity work. The prompt for this conversation was, “Talk about a time when you should have had the courage to say something about race and did not but wished you had.” You have three minutes.

As one of the co-facilitators of the experience, we were trained to respond, not react. Be a witness and hold confidential space. It was not my responsibility to comfort him. My role was to keep the structure, trust the process, and create the space for others to speak. My role was to honor and hold the memory. I was responsible for creating a safe and brave space for the monsters and demons to make themselves visible. 

After dinner, we returned to our rooms. 

Finally, after a few moments to myself, I called my family in Virginia and told them what had happened. The elders were silent and said only, "Be careful. Be very careful." 

“If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself. As the master, or as a member of the dominant race, he has felt little compulsion to acknowledge it or speak of it; the more painful it has grown the more deeply he has hidden it within himself. But the wound is there, and it is a profound disorder, as great a damage in his mind as it is in his society. This wound is in me, as complex and deep in my flesh as blood and nerves.  -Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound.

There was a return the next day. In morning connections, he only mentioned sharing something he had held for over 30 years. These two-and-a-half-day training sessions were meticulously planned with learning experiences designed to immerse adult learners in a world with different physics. In this world, everyone has equal time to talk. Discomfort was the teacher. Body scans held the cheat code. Interacting with this American story was a collective experience designed to reveal the surprise and challenge personal mythologies. Opting out was not an option. Everyone chose to attend, even the monster. 

I wear glasses to correct my vision. When I was a child, because I wanted to be like the other glass wearers in my family, I overcorrected my 20-20 vision, intentionally confusing an a for e so I could get glasses. Anyway, I got my glasses and wish, and now I could see like the other people in my family. But my vision was 20/20 before. But on that day, I knew what I saw, and I knew how I saw it. I did not need my glasses. I could not cognize but could oddly recognize. 

As we sat in our opening circle, I sat across from him, and he seemed lighter. I will never know how that release changed him. I do know it changed me. 

There are old black people in the future. There are old queer people in the future. 

There are old trans people in the future. There are old women in the future. 

As we witness the spawn in 2025, the elders provide ease, comfort, and advice. 

My parents' and grandparents' world was full of monsters like this— monsters who receive the public grace of absolution without reconciliation and repair. A world that permitted the most powerful to maim, kill, assault, and rape with impunity is a world that I do not recognize quickly, but they realize immediately. 

For them, this is not new. They lived in American apartheid. They were the first in their families to enter the American power structure with economic power and political access. They could vote thanks to the American human rights movement of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and became adults in the 1960s and 1970s. They recognize a country that worked against them. They recognize a country that worked against their parents. They were used to living in the borderland—a citizen-refugee existence in the land of their birth whose full citizenship carried a vitality that spills in blood. 

I grew up in new-ish America. 

This is my home / this thin edge of / barbwire. -Gloria Anzaldúa

To say that the Black American experience is similar to the immigrant experience without honest discourse about the brutality of American capitalism, slavery, and anti-Blackness creates saccharin solidarity—palatable but without a living structure for humans to metabolize effectively. 

However, the experiences of the first generation of Black Americans, who could gain access to America’s promised power and prosperity, may resonate with the experiences of some of the newest Americans. Yet, my parents were immigrants in their country of birth. 

My parents migrated to the White World with three weapons of protection: their genius and creativity, constitutional protection through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and legislative protection through the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. They left home. The traditions of work that required bodies were exchanged for work that required intellect. They had legal protection as federal citizens with unprecedented access to the ballot and political influence. 

My mother broke the tradition that had broken the backs of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmothers. But she too sensed resistance - the backlash of racist misogynist ideas that were written out of laws only to find new hosts in other bodies. Protect children from harm. From her vantage point, the immediate harm was white supremacy, racism, and misogynoir. 

Protect children from nightmares. They knew we would have dreams. 

Protect their bodies. They knew monsters were also body-snatchers—sometimes taking bodies slowly over time long before the mind realized it was separated. 

They knew that even though legislation kept the most enormous monsters caged with blunted tongues, they also knew the instinctual need to spawn. Some remained wild. 

Racism—the earth-splitter—shapeshifts into the present by meting out amnesia, absolution, favor, and second chances, but only to some. We witnessed this selective absolution in our recent election. Being part of a culture that can release at that scale is remarkable. It is remarkable because we all deserve that magnitude of absolution and amnesia. But it becomes heavy when that absolute amnesia is only extended to some and not all. The absolute burden of harm is disproportionately held by many while caused by just a few. America is not that new, after all.  

The currency of human relationships—grace, mercy, and forgiveness—creates the foundation for community. In the community, these should flow between us. But too often, those of us who are not white and male know far too well that our mistakes are never forgotten. We know that our attempts at perfection are stereotyped. We know exceptionality is not a choice but a survival strategy. 

Still, humans are fallible and make mistakes. I believe in second chances. 

If those elected and selected get second chances, then: 

Give a second chance to a child late to school. She was only trying to learn. 

Give a second chance to a teacher teaching American history. They were only trying to teach the truth. 

Give a second chance to the girl deciding not to give birth. She was only trying to live.

Give a second chance to all the black women who have the contributions of their mothers and grandmothers and who survived the monsters. Their terror has become ours. 

Equity work ensures that the grace, absolution, and mercy typically reserved for some unconditionally flow to all. 

When Americans understand that the grace, trust, and second chance extended to the richest and most powerful are deserved by all—insiders and outsiders, rich and poor, black and white, men and women, adults and children—we usher in the revolution we did not know we needed. Material and immaterial resources flow frictionlessly. We would do the design work of materializing grace in an economy that includes all of us. This is what equity work is all about. Equity work is the antidote to racism. 

Equity work kills the monster to save the human. 

Once again, we are in the age of monsters. But seeing clearly, recognizing truth, and figuring out the path forward requires a corrective lens. Too many people lie about what they see to fit in with their families and networks. This collective deception has distorted what we see, how we see, what we say, and how we make sense of the world. 

Equity work is about helping people recognize how easy it is not to be human. It is the essential pedagogy of correction. When practiced with skill and thoughtfulness, equity work teaches the instructional design of repair and reconciliation—first with the self and then with others. It supports community rebuilding through healing conflict that rebuilds trust, strong relationships, and purpose. It’s the connective tissue of our human identity. 

We can all become monsters. The harm we don't free with our mouths possesses the body—the eyes, ears, mouth, limbs, muscles, and bones. It leaves in its wake humans with charred black flesh, scraped feet and knees, maimed bodies, busted and broken glass, broken toys, black legs ripped off while simply going to the mailbox, torn eardrums from nearby explosions, and eyes pierced by shards of glass. It leaves legs bloody as scraped with barbed wire. It breaks families. It leaves babies and mothers hungry. It leaves the poor starved. It leaves the sick without care.  

In 2025, there were enough hosts to welcome the monster’s return with a red carpet of amnesia and absolution. But we have a choice. We always have a choice. 

We could let monsters run free and normalize the ease at which they unalive humans. Or we can continue to do equity work, challenge the social hierarchies in our communities, amplify the voices of the silenced, and correct our collective vision. With our collective vision corrected, we can see a path forward. 

We know what could happen to America's children without correction. We doom them to grow up and become more than scientists, leaders, and teachers—more than politicians, ministers, and engineers—more than brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. They will become monsters. 

Take your glasses off.