The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.

The essence of American racism is disrespect.

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 greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.

I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. I'm asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.

The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.

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