Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.

Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

The love of wisdom is a way of life; that is to say, it's a set of practices that have to do with mustering the courage to think critically about ourselves, society, and the world; mustering the courage to empathize; the courage, I would say, to love; the courage to have compassion with others, especially the widow and the orphan, the fatherless and the motherless, poor and working peoples, gays and lesbians, and so forth - and the courage to hope.

Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics?

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.

We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it.