I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself. The
I see the fight against sexism, racism, poverty, and even war finding their union not in synonymity but in their ultimate goal—a world more humane.
I come back to the motherland and this is the thanks I get? Still better than the knife-wielding thugs I found in Harlem, Misty. You do remember, don't you? I resent the term thug. That's 'cause you a...
I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.
Have you ever taken a hard look at those pictures from the sit-ins in the ’60s, a hard, serious look? Have you ever looked at the faces? The faces are neither angry, nor sad, nor joyous. They betray a...
Faggot was a word I had employed all my life. And now here they were, The Cabal, The Coven, The Others, The Monsters, The Outsiders, The Faggots, The Dykes, dressed in all their human clothes. I am bl...
Educated children walked in single file on the right side of the hallway, raised their hands to use the lavatory, and carried the lavatory pass when en route. Educated children never offered excuses—c...
Black is beautiful
A separate society within America would depend on the mechanisms of American wealth creation, and wealth in America has never been created in absence of government policy, of banks willing to lend and...
On the last day of her visit I drove your grandmother to the airport. Your mother was her only child, as you are my only child, and having watched you grow I know that nothing could possibly be more p...
Not just because of the black people swept away but because I know that gentrification is but a more pleasing name for white supremacy, is the interest on enslavement, the interest on Jim Crow, the in...
Love could be soft and understanding; that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism. And
We know what we are, that we walk like we are not long for this world, that this world has never longed for us.
These efforts curtailed the ability of black people to buy better housing, to move to better neighborhoods, and to build wealth. Also, by confining black people to the same neighborhoods, these effort...
The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of the country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive min...
The thing is, a black man can’t be president in America, given the racial aversion and history that’s still out there, Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Obama, told the journalist Gwen Ifill after the 2...
The robbery of time is not measured in lifespans but in moments. It is the last bottle of wine that you have just uncorked but do not have the time to drink. It is the kiss that you do not have time t...
The Dreamers accept this as the cost of doing business, accept our bodies as currency, because it is their tradition. As slaves we were this country’s first windfall, the down payment on its freedom....
Son, Last Sunday the host of a popular news show ask me what it meant to loose my body.
Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out.