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By Root 816 0

’s term “covering” out of academic obscurity and press it into the popular lexicon, so that it has the same currency as terms like “passing” or “the closet.” People confronted with demands to cover should feel emboldened to seek a reason for that demand, even if the law does not reach the actors making the demand, or recognize the group burdened by it. These reason-forcing conversations should happen outside courtrooms—in workplaces and restaurants, schools and playgrounds, chat rooms and living rooms, public squares and bars. They should occur informally and intimately, where tolerance is made and unmade.

What will constitute a good enough reason to justify assimilation will obviously be controversial. But I want to underscore that we have come to some consensus that certain reasons are illegitimate—like white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, religious intolerance, and animus toward the disabled. I ask us to be true to the commitments we have made by never accepting such biases as legitimate grounds for covering demands. Beyond that, I have sought to engender a series of conversations, rather than a series of results—what reasons count, and for what purposes, will be for us to decide by facing one another as individuals. My personal inclination is always to privilege the claims of the individual against countervailing interests like “neatness” or “workplace harmony.” But we should have that conversation.

Such conversations are the best—and perhaps the only—way to give both assimilation and authenticity their proper due. These conversations will help us chart and stay the course between the monocultural America suggested by conservative alarmists and the balkanized America suggested by the radical multiculturalists. They will reveal the true dimension of civil rights. The aspiration of civil rights has always been to permit people to pursue their human flourishing without limitations based on bias. Focusing on law prevents us from seeing the revolutionary breadth of that aspiration, as law has limited civil rights to particular groups. I am not faulting that limitation, as I think prioritization is necessary, and that the law’s priorities are correct. But civil rights, which has always extended far beyond the law, may now need to do so more than ever. It is only when we leave the law that civil rights suddenly stops being about particular groups and starts to become a project of human flourishing in which we all have a stake.

We must use the relative freedom of adulthood to integrate the many selves we hold. This includes uncovering the selves we buried long ago because they were inconvenient, impractical, or even hated. Because they must pass the test of survival, most of the selves we hold, like most of our lives, are ordinary. Yet sometimes, what is consequential in us begins to shine.

EPILOGUE

THE BLUE STAR

“Show me the place,” he said.

I removed my shirt and pointed

to a tiny star above my heart.

He leaned and listened. I could feel

his breath falling lightly, flattening

the hairs on my chest. He turned

me around, and his hands gently

plied my shoulder blades and then rose

to knead the twin columns forming

my neck. “You are an athlete?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a working man.”

“And you make?” he said. “I make

the glare for light bulbs.” “Yes,

where would we be without them?”

“In the dark.” I hear the starched

dress of the nurse behind me,

and then together they helped me

lie face up on his table, where blind

and helpless I thought of all

the men and women who had surrendered

and how little good it had done them.

The nurse took my right wrist

in her strong hands, and I

saw the doctor lean toward me,

a tiny chrome knife glinting in

one hand and tweezers in the other.

I could feel nothing, and then he said

proudly, “I have it!” and held up

the perfect little blue star, no

longer me and now bloodless. “And do

you know what we have under it?”

“No,” I said. “Another perfect star.”

I closed my eyes, but the lights