Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.

There is much depressing evidence that the religious voice is required to stay out of the public square only when it is pressed in a conservative cause.

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.

We often ask our citizens to split their public and private selves, telling them in effect that it is fine to be religious in private, but there is something askew when those private beliefs become the basis for public action.

Rumor is rarely more interesting than fact, but it is always more readily available.

In real life there are indeed black people who have been in the middle class for generations, but in entertainment it's as if they don't exist.