Janni "Gulde"

“Erasure is a form of oppression, the refusal to see.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“He was not forced to acknowledge the facts of his present. He was talked about in terms of his lost potential, what he would never be, rather than what he is. They spoke as if his future was patiently waiting for him to step into it. Most of us understand that your future is not promised to you. It is constructed day by day, through the choices you make. Your future is earned, little by little, through hard work and action. If you don't act accordingly, that dream dissolves.

If punishment is based on potential, privileged people will be given lighter sentences. Brock was shielded inside projections of what people like him grow up to become, or are supposed to become...The judge argued that he'd already lost so much, given up so many opportunities, What happens to those who start off with little to lose? Instead of a...Stanford athlete, let's imagine a Hispanic nineteen-year-old working in the fraternity kitchen commits the same crime. Does this story end differently? Does the Washington Post call him a surgeon?

My point can be summed up in the line Brock wrote: I just existed in a reality where nothing can go wrong or nobody could think of what I was doing as wrong. Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Imagine you’re walking down the street eating a sandwich and someone says, Damn, that looks like a delicious sandwich, can I have a bite? You’d think, why would I ever let you eat this sandwich? This is my sandwich. So you’d walk on and continue eating, and they’d say, What? You’re not going to say anything? No need to get mad, I was just trying to compliment your sandwich. Let’s say this happened three times a day, strangers stopping you on the street, letting you know how good your food looks, asking if they can have some of it. What if people started yelling out of their cars about how much they wanted your sandwich. Let me have some! they’d exclaim, driving by with a honk. Were you supposed to say, I’m sorry, no thank you, every time? Would you feel obligated to explain over and over again that you don’t wish to share because it’s your lunch and you don’t know them? That you don’t owe them any of it? That it’s a little unreasonable that they’re asking in the first place? All you would want is to walk down the street eating your sandwich in peace. Maybe I am making this worse by comparing a woman’s body to a sandwich, but do you see what I mean?”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“The pivotal question throughout the trial was whether or not consent was issued. Yes or no. We act as if there is a single traffic light, red or green. But sex is a road lined with intersections, which way to go, when to slow down, to yield, to stop, to speed up.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir