There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

I've spent my entire adult life teaching at colleges of various kinds, all of them very different from Yale, and I have a fairly cynical perspective on what elite institutions - and the privileges they embody - represent in America.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.

Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock.

There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.