The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-slave alike.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.

What happened in the interim is, billions of records have been digitized. Historians and scholars have always used genealogical records to tell the story of American history. It takes months and years of research. I can't even tell you how laborious that is. You have to be somebody who has a lot of free time, like a professor who can take tenure or someone with a great deal of leisure.

Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

Our society is driven today by so much ethnic discord. We have Black Lives Matter, which I praise and celebrate. We have the demagogues stereotyping Muslims and resurrecting racist stereotypes they used to visit on us. The larger goal is to show that we are all the same, we all come from Africa, and we all have the same larger family tree. It's about the fundamental unity of the human community.