If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld.

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.

Facts might be false if they challenge the conviction of a mind already made up.

History is prone to mistakes in identity, and facts are not always solid things.