Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.

When I think about the auto-industry and how it was one of the industries that brought all of these black men from the South to Michigan and other places to make more money than they could ever make in the cotton fields or the agricultural world of the South... what's happening now is all of that is closing down, and we know that it's going to reopen in Southern places, focusing on Mexican and other migrant workers to come and work cheaply and get none of the benefits.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.

You are not going to destroy this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it.

Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation.

Only grown-ups think that the things children say come out of nowhere. We know they come from the deepest parts of ourselves.