From the comfort of my bedroom, I came upon a comment that stuck with me for quite some time: I have never experienced outright racism here, an anonymous poster said. It’s because the racists here are cowards. They will never say anything to your face.

Through the messages I’d received through books and from people around me my whole life, I’d been told that relationships have a playbook that they start and develop by, and had either desperately misconstrued these messages or taken the really damaging ones to heart.