I don't know why people always compare me [ with Amiri Baraka] I was never part of the Black Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea when they were operating in Harlem.

The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.

Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.

Richard Price got a million dollar advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer in history.

Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so--called educational system, whichis nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one's ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the "educational system" are the prime sources of racism in the United States.

Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.