‘We Quit America’: Our Exit From a Country Designed to Kill Black People

By Yanique Redwood This article is excerpted and adapted from the book “We Quit America: Our Exit From a Country Designed to Kill Black People.” Quitting America was not one decision; it was many decisions over time. It was small moments of awareness, like a flashlight pointing to the exit in a smoke-filled burning house: I couldn’t see my own hands as they reached out to help me find the way, but I moved toward the exit anyway. I felt the heat closing in behind me. I couldn’t breathe. My nostrils burned. And slowly, my eyes, although stinging, adjusted to the painful truth: America is bad for Black people. And there is no making it better. I had to get out. My first awareness that this country hated me was when Blake, a white high school classmate whom I believed to be a friend, flashed what I now know was racism. I can still see his sandy-brown hair, thin round spectacles, and smirking alabaster face as he dismissed my acceptance into Georgia Tech, my top choice for undergrad. “It is because she is Black and female that she got in,” he said as my classmates gathered in the back of...