After reading, Kiese Laymon’s essay, “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America,” last semester for my creative writing class, I was familiar with Laymon’s story. He overcame struggles pertaining to his race, and his risks he took with his writing. In turn, his college punished his out of the box, satirical thinking, and his willingness to stand up for himself no matter the cost. The essay in his collection of essays that struck me the most was “Our Kind of Ridiculousness,” because there is one question that begs an answer. “Don’t you think police, teachers, doctors, and dentists should be more just and compassionate than the rest of us? Who protects us from you?” (pg 55). This question is brought up after Laymon’s patient was tested by his neighbors, his girlfriend’s friend (which is not too relevant to my argument), and the cops. All of them were ignorant in some ways. His neighbor named Kurt, kick started his aggravation (well in this chapter) when Kurt said, “ Youse are different. Youse ain’t like your kind,” (51).…show more content… Obviously this was a racist statement, and Laymon took offense as he rightfully should, so Laymon “got all graduate school on him and spouted some mess about dissonance, dissemblance, white absolution, and how it might be impossible for him to know if I was different than my kind if he didn’t know himself,”
