New York (Queens)

Kendi was born and raised in Queens, a borough of New York City, and he frequently describes his life there in vivid detail. This includes attending Floyd H. Flake's Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church where his father was a minister, and where the family regularly helped serve Thanksgiving dinner to the needy. In Chapter 3 he mentions that the public primary schools in his neighborhood were were not deemed good enough, and that his parents put him in private school starting in third grade. He went back into the public system for high school, and recalls feeling constantly afraid of being beaten up or shot, even though there was very little violence at the school or in his neighborhood. He was simply responding to the racist beliefs about majority Black spaces advanced in the media. Kendi also recalls hanging out on Queens Ave. with his friends...