I am well aware, for example, that voter suppression is a serious problem. If we’re going to consider degrees of magnitude, which is a masturbatory exercise at best, voter suppression is the more serious problem. Or is it?

For Salon, our essays editor Roxane Gay discusses the racism that permeates American culture in forms big and small.

You can’t just “get over” relatively minor instances of bigotry, Roxane argues, when everything is interconnected; dehumanization is dehumanization whether it’s an offensive Halloween costume or the denial of civil rights.