Packed merrily into my friends’ beater, an old Ford Pinto, we headed into Jennings, a mostly Black North St. Louis County community heavily patrolled by white officers, to pick up one more college friend.

The whole issue of generalizing and overgeneralizing is always an issue. I use the term archetyping. I say, No, I am not stereotyping; I am archetyping. Stereotypes tend to be accusatory. I want to move the discussion away from a discussion of right and wrong to right and left—this is the way it is over here, and this is the way it is over there—and then look at the problems that develop as a result of each group interacting according to the standards of its own culture.

A sign warns trespassers off/away from the site.

He sent me an ingenious reply to an email.