I don't think that an emphasis on the peculiar plight of black males at all suggests that others are not suffering, or that such attention suggests that black men and women feel sorry for themselves.

Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent.

When people are not sure about their future, when their economies are suffering, when their personal fortunes are flagging, we have often in this country turned to nativism and xenophobia and racism and anti-immigrant sensibilities and passions to express our sense of outrage at what we can't control - and to forge a kind of fitful solidarity that turns out to be rather insular - we look inward and not outward.

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was not viewed by many white Americans as black. He was not seen as the African American athlete who was rebellious: Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron... He was accepted in golf clubs that were very tony.

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

I think that the over-incarceration of black and brown folk is one of the great crimes of American society.