We can’t have a freedom struggle without free choice.
We are who we are because somebody loved us.
A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.
The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark.
If you can’t have a good time and smile and relate to people across race and class, then the success that you have ultimately is just sounding brass and tinkling symbol.
I would say you have to fight in the life of the mind as well as fight in the streets, as well as fight in the courts, as well as fight in congress and the White House. Every site is a sight of contestation.
Courage is being true to yourself, true to a sense of integrity.
The evil is so ubiquitous in terms of objectification of all of us, that one can say that almost about any TV and even radio show.
You’ve got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you’ll be able to love others.
Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
As long as you’re scared you’re on the plantation.
To me, healing means you have to recognize there is a wound and you try to understand what the sources of the wound are, which means you try to tell a story about how it came to be. So you have to engage in some historical interpretation.
We’ve got the wrong vision, the wrong values, the wrong priority, and as the great prophetic figure Marian Edelman Wright puts it, we have been AWOL when it comes to poor people and poor children.
The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the people who are suffering. That’s what we’re here for.
No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.
White supremacy is so deep-seated that it’s hard to see it eliminated. But we could definitely push it back.
To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.