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

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

My job is to explain stuff you don't know or already know and have to unlearn. My job is to teach you stuff you don't know that you need to know, stuff you should know. I'm going to take what you already know and re-describe it.

White supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief or the investment in the inherent superiority of some, while others are believed to be innately inferior. And it doesn't demand the individual participation of the singular bigot. It is a machine operating in perpetuity, because it doesn't demand that somebody be in place driving.

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

[ Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher] introduced us to these authors early on and taught us that their literature is important. Langston Hughes - we read his poetry. We studied who W.E.B DuBois was. And so she whetted our appetites.

I don't think that an emphasis on the peculiar plight of black males at all suggests that others are not suffering, or that such attention suggests that black men and women feel sorry for themselves.