Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.

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

Shame produces trauma. Trauma produces paralysis.

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or ... and oppression of others.

I was teasing my brother that he was penniless, homeless, jobless. Right now in his life, racism isn't the central highlighting force: it's the world of work and economics. It doesn't mean that he isn't influenced by racism, but when he wakes up in the morning the thing that's driving his world is really issues of class, economics and power as they articulate themselves.

Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.