It is a distortion of the notion of romantic love to want to see obedience as the quintessential expression of respect.

A very hurting thing for Black Americans - to feel that we can't love our enemies. People forget what a great tradition we have as African-Americans in the practice of forgiveness and compassion. And if we neglect that tradition, we suffer.

Because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.

Couples who rarely or never have sex can know lifelong love.

Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.

Secrets find a way out in sleep . . . It is the place where there is no pretense.

Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.