I think it's extremely important to challenge white brothers and sisters and think more systematically and strategically about the whiteness that they possess.

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

I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone.

We began to connect literacy and learning and the lively effects of biblical knowledge and preaching pretty early. That was a tremendous impact.

I don't mind the job of saying to white people, "Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing." And it's my job to educate white folks every day.

I was born in '58, so the riot in Detroit in 1967 was a memorable introduction to the issue of race and how race made a difference in American society. And then the next year, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. And the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series. All of that made a huge impression on my growing mind.

Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity; that is indeed the "negative" way of characterizing African American identity.