Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.

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.

What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through--that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that's a statement.

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.