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

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.

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.

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 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.

I look at my kids, who were born under a Black president, who hop around the living room naked and joyful, mimicking Simone Biles, and just think, Damn, they got some amazing role models of Black excellence.