What are you for? It may be, to a degree, consoling that white brothers and sisters did not vote for [Donald] Trump, and do not participate in that brand of animus, that gas-bagging of enormous bigotry.

He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we're constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help.

What the left ends up missing is that politics have always been at the heart of American culture; it's been a white identity that's been rendered invisible and neutral because it's seen as objective and universal. As a result, we don't pay attention to how whiteness is one among many racial identities, and that identity politics have been here since the get-go.

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches.

I'm in bed, so to speak, more with those people who consider themselves atheists but who are concerned about the same things, ideas, and politics I'm concerned with than those who claim to be religious in the same way that I am but have no interest in the political reorganization of society, which needs to be talked about from the pulpit.

That kind of peer learning, that peer teaching, that peer evaluation, and then administration of insight.