Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.

..And the same rapper who revels in a woman's finely proportioned behind may also speak against racism and on behalf of the poor, even as he encourages them not to look at hip-hop as their salvation.

The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics.

I was very struck when Min. Farrakhan said if Jesus and Muhammad were here today, they'd be embracing each other. That's a tremendous message that needs to be heard more broadly.

Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive way that we have internalized ourselves inside black communities. You look at many of the prominent black people in this society who have been able to do well. Many have been lighter-skinned.

If journalism is the first draft of history, then digital literacy is the first blush of the first page of history.

I don't worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible.