One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.

If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.

…“white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist control” over other black people.

We are rarely able to interact only with folks like ourselves, who think as we do. No matter how much some of us deny this reality and long for the safety and familiarity of sameness, inclusive ways of knowing and living offer us the only true way to emancipate ourselves from the divisions that limit our minds and imaginations.

You must have courage to love, you have to have a profound will to do what is right to love, and it does not come easy.

Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair.

I have been contemplating the place and meaning of love in our lives and culture for years. When a subject attracts my intellectual and emotional imagination, I am long to observe it from all angles, to know it inside and out.