Challenging power structures from the inside, working the cracks within the system, however, requires learning to speak multiple languages of power convincingly.

Far too many black men who praise their own mother feel less accounted to the mothers of their own children.

Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate

That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice.