After five minutes with literally anyone, I’ll look up and be like, you’re Fire Nation. You’re Water. It’s almost like that’s my manual for understanding human behavior.
ATLA’s childlike ideal shows us a model for returning to our original enlightenment. It shows us that we can be less like an arrow, and more like Sokka’s boomerang — we can finally embark home, to the child hero already waiting within us.
American culture likes to identify its heroes and villains; Avatar the Last Airbender creators Koniezko and DiMartino are neither. For me, they are not “canceled.” But contrary to public worship, their work bears harm too.
"There’s so much public policy that can help us be a care-seeking society. That’s what advocacy means to me: to speak and enter the public forum, to fight for our patients, to say that when we create structures in our society and in our public policy, we can do better to honor every person’s dignity."
For those who would prefer to imagine white supremacy as the ink printed in our high school textbooks — see it today instead as Ahmaud Arbery’s blood, running down the streets of Satilla Drive. Ahmaud Arbery, may you rest in peace.
For the rest of your life, people will ask: What was your time at Harvard like? Now is the time to pay attention. Better yet, now is the time to speak up.
