Sublime

“I’m not satisfied until every American enjoys his full constitutional rights. If a Negro baby is born—and this is true also of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in some of our cities—he has about one-half as much chance to get through high school as a white baby. He has one-third as much chance to get through college as a white student. He has about a

No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself.

Maybe it’s all my subconscious, finally paying attention to something other than me.

At this time, the colonial leaders enacted a system of racial classification that would elevate European immigrants and their descendants as “White” and all others classified as non-White and African. For Africans, this came with a destiny of servitude in perpetuity and even applied to those who lived free in the colonies for several generations.

What the boy wanted the black box to do was innocent enough: return him to the days of myth and origin, when all the places a person could reach were green and pliant, and life might still be anything at all.

The rest of the time, I hung in purgatory, playing talent shows and showcases here and there, living like a normal teenager in Philadelphia. Or maybe I should say living like a normal black teenager, which meant that aimlessness was accompanied by a certain unique set of risks. One night, I was out driving with a few friends of mine when the police

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

Driving uptown to Harlem was an eerie experience. There is no welcome for whitey there; suspicion stalks the streets, and, contrary to our usual experience, no crowd collects to stand and stare at the film crew at work. The streets look empty and forlorn, given over to grinding poverty, soaring crime, and the deathly delusion of drugs.