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 guess I'm a Luddite.

To challenge norms, presuppositions, practices in communities across this country - where the unconscious valorization and celebration of whiteness and conscious resistance to trying to grapple with black and brown and other peoples of color's ideas and identities - makes a huge difference.

You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King, Jr., and not think of death. You might hear the words 'I have a dream,' but they will doubtlessly only serve to underscore an image of a simple motel balcony, a large man made small, a pool of blood. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is - and was - death that ultimately defined him.

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

I grew up on the West Side - the "near West Side," [in Detroit], as they say - in what would be considered now the inner city.

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.