"I don’t blame you for thinking that," Emerson said. "But you don’t know what these people have survived. They thrive on persecution, it unites them. It builds a class chasm between them and society, it lets them prey on the rest of us without a twinge of conscience. No, we have to let them grow, Laura, we have to give them a stake in our status quo. It’s a long-term struggle. Decades long. Lifetimes. Just like the Abolition."