Suffering Does Not Necessarily Ennoble

I First Learned That There Were Black People Living In Some Place Called Other Than The United States In The Western Hemisphere When I Was A Very Little Boy, And My Father Told Me That When He Was A Boy About My Age, He Wanted To Be An Episcopal Priest, Because He So Admired His Priest, A Black Man From Someplace Called Haiti.

I Believe In The Law. I Think We Have A Great System Of Justice. But I Do Think That System Of Justice Has Been Corrupted By Racism And Classism. I Think It's Difficult For 'poor People' - Poor White People, Brown People - To Be Treated Fairly Before The Law In The Same Way That Upper-class People Are.

Very Few Black People Ever Embraced Back To Africa Movements, And Very Few Actually, A Tiny Number Actually Went Back To Africa. They Said, "we Are Going To Make America Live Up To The Ideals Of The Declaration Of Independence And The Constitution Of The United States." They Produced One Of The World's Great Cultures; They Produced Individuals Who Were Just As Brilliant And Made Contributions To The World Civilization. In Fact, They Produced A World-class Civilization, The African American Civilization, In Music, In Dance, In Oratory, In Religion, In Writing.

Patriotism Is Best Exemplified Through Auto-critique.

In America One Drop Of Black Ancestry Makes You Black. In Brazil, It's Almost As If One Drop Of White Ancestry Makes You White.