That I really was the wretch they made me out to be, and deserved no more than the abuses I received.
So there was nothing new in the suddenly transracial spirit that saw the country, in 2008, reaching for the best part of itself. It had done so before—and then promptly retrenched in the worst part of...
Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them.
Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In
Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.
Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long tradition of this country actively punishing black success—and...
J'ai commencé à comprendre que le but de mon éducation était une forme d'inconfort, un processus qui n'était pas destiné à me récompenser avec mon propre Rêve personnel mais qui, au contraire, devait...
It is to point out that at this late hour, the totems of the empire of slavery—chief among them, its flag—still enjoy an honored place in the homes, and public spaces, of self-professed patriots and v...
It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly symbolic, a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols don’t just represent reality but can become tools to change i...
In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as a pervasive system both native and essential to that body.
In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any oth...
I was wrong. My enemy is not a beguiler, but a revealer. She brings out of us all the awful feelings that we have hidden away. And makes them manifest. So I know now that this is who I am. Might. Sham...
I wanted to pursue things, to know things, but I could not match the means of knowing that came naturally to me with the expectations of professors. The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right...
I never wanted you to be twice as good as them, so much as I have always wanted you to attack every day of your brief bright life in struggle. The people who must believe they are white can never be y...
I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of you...
I don’t ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails.
I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle...
I am tied to old ways, which I learned in a hard house. It was a loving house even as it was besieged by its country, but it was hard. Even in Paris, I could not shake the old ways, the instinct to wa...
I am ashamed of how I acted that day, ashamed of endangering your body. But I am not ashamed because I am a bad father, a bad individual or ill mannered. I am ashamed that I made an error, knowing tha...
I almost never danced, as much as I wanted to. I was crippled by some childhood fear of my own body.