“If there’s any legacy of ’60s Black Nationalism I find ennobling and empowering, it’s that movement’s Pan­-Afrikanist embrace of Black folk every­where as brother and sister.”

“Unity cannot be an end in itself. The emphasis on it in the past two decades has been a sign of the intellectual and moral chaos in which black America finds itself. Only the weak insist on being agreed with.”

While Coltrane and Professor Griff and Marian Anderson and N.W.A and Sojourner Truth and George Schuyler and Angela Davis and Michael Jackson, Bigger Thomas and Clarence Thomas are all African American, they may not all be “black.”

“Tamu was shot and killed in a robbery attempt, and yes, I do know about the statistics, but aren’t those who are black and young and beautiful and vibrant and loud and sassy and talented somehow exempt?”

“To put it crudely, America would not exist without 244 years of black slavery, 85 years of Jim and Jane Crow, and now, one of two black kids caught in a violence-infested life of poverty.”

“No doubt, our bodies are shot through with meaning, riddled with definitions and qualities not of our own choosing.”

“When the celestial mood grips Prine the sky is thick with black angels, Jesus covers the waterfront, and God’s not in his heav­en — he’s on the phone and won’t let well enough alone.”

"As Congress reconvenes, people are waiting to see what, if anything, this son of a Flatbush paint sales­man can do about war, recession, and poverty"

“Jewish children in years to come may live much like my par­ents, with a subtle but consuming sense of dread. America could yet turn out to be not so different from the Old World my grand­parents fled.”