For we have built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression and these must be altered at the same time that we alter the living condition which are the result of those structures. For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining - I'm broadening the joining.

Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.

Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.

It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.