My parents didn't really restrict my movement, so I got involved in the underground music scene and the activism scene; I was doing some volunteering in food relief. I spent a lot of time throughout the city in poor areas, even though my family lived in a wealthy area.

I was relatively isolated from people of color. My parents are too old to be Baby Boomers; they had me later in life. So we didn't listen to any black music at all in the house, not even Ben E. King.

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.

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.

It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense.