Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

I went to see Chris Rock on Saturday night here in Atlanta, and he made a statement in his comedy. He said, look, when you're the big person, when you're the rich person, poor people can say stuff about you, but it's downright wrong and brutal for rich people to beat up on poor people. He said people who are larger can lampoon people who are skinnier, but not the opposite.

That is an extremely important role: how white brothers and sisters laterally spread knowledge, insight, and challenge in a way that white brothers and sisters will not hear it from a person like me, necessarily.

We can't exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.

I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'

I do believe that it is quite necessary for us as a people to reach back, over and down to help the less fortunate of our number.

If your experiences suggest to you that poor black folk are lazy, then you must be true to those experiences - except, however, as your experiences are pressured by empirical investigation of complex phenomena. I suspect that even when you control for variables of individual laziness, you'll see that what you see before you masses of black poor people unwilling to work hard to get better will not be as simply concluded as you might at first believe. Continue your good work.