ABSTRACT
Pedestrians and drivers slow down to get a better view. Like the intersection that increases the probabilities of safe passages through averted collisions, the Black woman plaintiff may not experience the same likelihood of safety in all aspects as another non-Black worker might. Asian Pacific Islander Desi American community activists and allies argued on local and national airwaves that the man's crime was racially motivated. The intersection is the site of numerous accidents as well as the sacred grounds of souls lost and traumas endured. The metaphor of the basement reminds us of this deep and wide history of institutional violence—legal precedence and exclusionary laws which sanctioned theft of labor, land, and personhood to multiply oppressed generations upon generations. Toni Morrison reminded international audiences of America's unredressed history of slavery in which enslaved people remained unremembered, not even memorialized by a bench by the side of the road for passersby to rest and remember.
