Toni Morrison On When She’ll Know Racism Is Over

One of the best parts about Toni Morrison having written a new novel (aside, of course, from the book itself) is all the interviews. Over the last few weeks, the 84-year-old Nobel Prize winner has given bunches of insightful and wide-ranging chats about her life, work, and opinions on making the bed.  Morrison is best known for novels set in the past; her most acclaimed, 1987's Beloved, takes place in the aftermath of American slavery. But, in her most recent sit-down, with Britain's Telegraph, she shares her thoughts on the very recent present. "People keep saying, 'We need to have a conversation about race,'" she tells the paper. "This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And, I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, 'Is it over?', I will say yes." Her statement references the racially charged shootings of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, and others. But, Morrison is clear she doesn't see racism as the driving force behind injustice, so much as economic inequality.  In her latest book, she writes, "most of the real answers concerning slavery, lynching, forced labour, sharecropping, racism, Jim Crow, prison labour, migration, civil rights and black revolution movements were all about money.” Following up on that thought, to The Telegraph, Morrison says. "They don't stop and frisk on Wall Street, which is where they should." Morrison's new novel, God Help the Child, is her first to be set in present times. (The Telegraph)