There won't be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won't be any more white folks around who actually remember them.

If we dont figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, were not going to survive as a productive and healthy society.

The power of resistance is to set an example: not necessarily to change the person with whom you disagree, but to empower the one who is watching and whose growth is not yet completed, whose path is not at all clear, whose direction is still very much up in the proverbial air.

Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias rather than exaggerate them.

The denial of racism is a form of racism itself.

As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular “hook” upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release.

When I got to college, the fake ID thing wasn't that important, since pretty much everyone could get away with drinking in New Orleans. But the drugs, well, that was a different story altogether, because drugs are every bit as illegal in New Orleans as anywhere else--at least, if you're black and poor, and have the misfortune of doing your drugs somewhere other than the dorms at Tulane University. But if you are lucky enough to be living at Tulane, which is a pretty white place, especially contrasted with the city where it's located, which is 65 percent black, then you are absolutely set.