Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

And I don't think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there's another set of moral codes, but I don't think government has a role.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

I don't really have the luxury to be bitter. I don't have the luxury of having negative things in my life.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I'm not an Uncle Tom. . .. I'm going to be here for 40 years. For those who don't like it, get over it.

[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.