Your average white liberal might agree with social justice in principle, and yet live quite comfortably as a "winner" in a nation whose social institutions - characterized by political exclusion, exploitation, and unequal access to resources - have systematically made others lose out. But here's the thing. Maybe it's time to get uncomfortable and upset. Maybe those feelings can be acted upon.

I don't think of rejection as rejection, just a bad fit. Then I seek out other avenues of acceptance.

Nowadays we can sidestep traditional media with social media and technology that allows us to become citizen journalists, to fight against injustice by showing what's shamefully going on.

I learned from James Baldwin that one can be a novelist, essayist, and activist, combined. That being critical of one's country is a way of loving it. That travel is crucial for perspective. That faith needn't be confined to organized religion.

I don't keep from despairing. I let myself despair. I just don't linger there for too long. There's too much to laugh about, two knuckleheads I have to feed, and a lot of really excellent television to watch. I think the mess we're in deserves the full range of human feeling, from despair to its opposite, which I would say is not hope, happiness, or peace, but freedom.

I think it's really crucial to leave our American context, not only for a sense of individual freedom, but also to make links to international struggles for civil rights.

It matters when public officials admit that their hearts have changed, but only in the service of changing actual policy.