title: Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches from a Black Journalista (New England  Library Of Black Literature)
author:  Erin Aubry Kaplan 
description: Los Angeles Times"<br /><br />Erin Aubry Kaplan writes with a quiet, erudite fury. Her passionate sentences are a lament and a celebration of the black experience. She s a black intellectual, in a time when race isn t supposed to mean anything anymore. <i><b>Los Angeles Times</b></i>"<br /><br />-Erin Aubry Kaplan writes with a quiet, erudite fury. Her passionate sentences are a lament and a celebration of the black experience. She's a black intellectual, in a time when race isn't supposed to mean anything anymore.---<i><b>Los Angeles Times</b></i><br /><br />"Erin Aubry Kaplan writes with a quiet, erudite fury. Her passionate sentences are a lament and a celebration of the black experience. She's a black intellectual, in a time when race isn't supposed to mean anything anymore."--<i><b>Los Angeles Times</b></i>
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00073.jpeg)
  
  **Table of Contents**
  
  You Can Keep That to Yourself
  
  About Adam Smyer
  
    
    
    
  
  > > HELLO, WELL-INTENTIONED PERSON OF PALLOR!
  
    
  
  > > It’s Daquan—the black coworker you are referring to when you claim to have
  > black friends.
  
    
  
  > > You are reading this book because you want to know what not to say. They
  > get mad at you when you say the wrong thing. But no one will tell you, up
  > front, what not to say. Well, I will tell you. Because I am your friend.
  > Your real black friend.
  
    
    
    
  
  > > I will tell you what not to _say_ , but I will not tell you what not to
  > _think_. Think whatever you like.
  
    
  
  > > Let’s review.
  
    
  
  > > THOUGHTS are the things on the In side of your head. They are invisible.
  > Your thoughts are yours. No one else’s. No one else wants them.
  
    
  
  > > WORDS are the things that exit your hole to the Out side of your head,
  > where we are. They are a lot like thoughts, except that we can hear them. We
  > don’t want most of those, ei