“We were sharing food, which he had all but insisted on. I had been a tad unsure about it, not certain that it was entirely professional to be digging into a subject’s meal minutes after we met. But he seemed hampered by no such considerations. “Get in there, bro,” he said, gesturing to his plate in between discussions of whether or not people of color can be gentrifiers (his black female optician did not think so) and whether or not N.W.A. was, by any definition, “conscious rap” (an argument can be made, perhaps). I felt aware of a duality. On one hand, I was a professional reporter, trying my best to look as if I belonged where I was, doing what I was doing: sharp questions, clear thinking, research prepared. On the other hand, I was a black American man hanging out with a British-Pakistani man in a white cafe in what used to be a black neighborhood, chopping it up at a high level. On the third hand, I was a writer for a national magazine sharing a platform with an international film star while we talked about all the serpentine machinations of oppression and how they’ve woven and buried themselves in the very flesh of our lives. To dig haphazardly into his plate of quinoa or not?” (more...)