It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.
Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.
Black women must challenge black men to live up to their best in every arena of the culture - at job, at home, in school and in religious arenas.
Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
If your experiences suggest to you that poor black folk are lazy, then you must be true to those experiences - except, however, as your experiences are pressured by empirical investigation of complex phenomena. I suspect that even when you control for variables of individual laziness, you'll see that what you see before you masses of black poor people unwilling to work hard to get better will not be as simply concluded as you might at first believe. Continue your good work.
Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.
I spoke at the University of Georgia, and a whole contingent of Tea Party people in Hell's Angels regalia came in and sat in the front and scowled at me while I gave my talk. And afterwards the head of the group got to the microphone and said, I'm surprised that I agree with almost everything you said, but I'm worried that you're a big government guy.
I, like anybody whoever met Eric Wright, was mesmerized & inspired. Eric was more like a big brother to me , to all of us. I always think to myself, if there was no Ruthless, West Coast hip hop would not have been as big.
If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.