In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door. That was social and economic progress. That model is gone now. We also had a world order that was fraught but fairly stable.

My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him.

An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement.

There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

That's what I mean by being bilingual: comfortable in your skin, comfortable with all parts of who you are.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?