“Can I ask you something?” I say in a hushed voice. “Has anything bad ever happened to you? I was just wondering because it seems like people here have lived such gilded”—another new word—“lives. I don’t understand how my life has been so hard, but there are people in the world who just seem to float along with no problems. I wish it could have been like that for me is all I’m saying. I think a big part of why it was so hard is because I was born poor and Black. If God isn’t responsible for that, who is?”

Bryce looks stunned. He doesn’t know how to respond. I’m pretty sure I already have the answer to the question, based on what I know about him. He was raised in a mostly white, hippie Christian commune in California where people praised God, smoked cannabis, and hugged trees, and where a lot of bad stuff probably didn’t happen. Bryce is open-minded about almost everything, except for his faith, which I think is really a safety blanket that protects him from the harsh realities of the world. If it’s all God’s plan, the dragon never needs to be faced. Now, I’ve called the dragon to task and he doesn’t know how to confront it.

He nervously thumbs through the pages of his Bible. I decide I’ve probably ruined any chance of ever dating him. Who wants to be romantic with someone who reminds them of everything that is wrong with the world? He will definitely never look at me like I matter now. He will probably avoid looking at me altogether. I am surprised, when he finally does look up, to see even more compassion in his eyes. I’m so overwhelmed, I glance down at my twiddling thumbs, my place of refuge in moments of discomfort like this.

“I’m just trying to find the right words,” he says finally. “To answer your question. No, nothing really ‘bad’ has happened to me in my life. Wow, I feel super privileged admitting that. Honestly, before I started getting involved in diversity work, I never really thought about race. I didn’t even believe it was still a problem. I thought things were pretty good now. I was basing that off my own experience, which is generally easygoing, but I’ve learned from a lot of students of color that that’s definitely not the case for them. I don’t know what to do with that. How to make it right, you know?”