Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.

Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American. You don't just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.

You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.

I think there's a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that's not really it.

The essence of American racism is disrespect.

I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.