Tony Morrison said, 'Can't I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.'

If journalism is the first draft of history, then digital literacy is the first blush of the first page of history.

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.

I believe in a God of a second chance and a God of love and mercy, because I need so much more of it myself.

New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party - usually at a gathering in a home - where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life.

There's a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.

I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.