…ame time when we are made to believe, and also when we are too young to question the likelihood and validity of receiving money from fairies for fallen teeth, or mystical fat men flinging themselves down chimneys (which is interesting — to grow up in an apartment building where hallways were littered with Budweiser beer cans after late-night house parties and stairwells carried scattered used condoms and their affiliate wrappers strewn about, having to rationalize why Saint Nicholas aka Santa Claus only came down chimneys, and did not climb through windows using fire escapes as leverage, in the stories shared in classrooms. We wrote letters to him each year, and each I would receive none of the things I asked for. Jesus and Santa seem to hold similar spaces in my heart in that way) that if we only work hard, if we only meditate on the goodness of the world and the people and dreams in it, if we only go the extra mile and place our best shackled, mangled foot forward, or bow our heads in the most uncomfortable of positions for the most exalted of gods using the most holy of prayers, that we too can have our slight slice of Americana, of the American Dream; this is the rapturous tale weaved by the fairest of skins for the most disadvantaged, disenfranchised, colored and unsaved miscreants of the world. We are told at youth that we are to gobble up these old wives tales of racial harmony once conceived by founding fathers; these men who owned other men, who used race as a blow torch to ignite bias and prejudice, inciting hate as a means of justifying the perfunctory methods …