All of these heroes had failed to cajole and coerce the masters of America. Their ambition of a better world had been frustrated. This was the story of my ancestors, the story I expected for myself. T...
Whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carcer...
Think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing,...
My death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of race, imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods.
But talent is nothing without a field on which to display its gifts.
Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing -- myself. Here was the les...
You deserved so much more, little flower. You deserved a Wakanda that cherished you. But this is the Wakanda we have. And while the Midnight Angels breathe, I swear to you... they shall all pay.
When presidential candidate Barack Obama presented himself to the black community, he was not to be believed. It strained credulity to think that a man sporting the same rigorously managed haircut as...
When our elders presented school to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing.
When it came to her son, Dr. Jones’s country did what it does best—it forgot him. The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary component of the Dream. They have forgotten the scale of theft that...
What I want you to know is that this is not your fault, even if it is ultimately your responsibility.
What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it. I tell...
Toute ma vie, j'avais entendu des gens dire à leurs filles et leurs garçons noirs d'être deux fois meilleurs, ce qui revient à dire accepte d'avoir deux fois moins. Ces paroles étaient prononcées sur...
This chasm makes itself known to us in all kinds of ways. A little girl wanders home, at age seven, after being teased in school and asks her parents, Are we niggers and what does this mean?
There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally. In
The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive mi...
The spirit and soul are the body and the brain, which are destructible—that is precisely why they are so precious.
The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible- that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings.
The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism a la c...
The entire narrative of this country argues against the truth of who you are.