Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless. To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means.

When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth.

None of us should be ashamed to speak of our class power or lack of it. Overcoming fear, even the fear of being immodest, and acting courageously to bring issues of class- especially radical standpoints – into the discourse of blackness is a gesture of militant defiance, one that runs counter to bourgeois insistence that we think of “money” in particular and class in general as private matters.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.