All Americans deserve an equal crack at what it means to be a - having - having resources in your own home and in your state and in your country.

I received my calling and accepted it at around 18.

Perception, after all, is not simply a matter of what you believe about yourself, it all encompasses what others think about you, and what has been thought of you historically. I say we can pay attention to those other dimensions of our identity - class, gender, sexual orientation, geographical region - while at the same time understanding how our historically produced racial identity continues to serve, or undercut us.

I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

When I was 12 years old, my pastor came to the church: Dr. Fredrick Samson. And that was revolutionary because he mentored me and I got a chance to see up close the impact of a rhetorical genius.

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.