Sublime

The eyes in that face prove the unforgivable and unimaginable horror of being a captive in the promised land, but also prove that trouble don’t last always: and the voice, once filled with a rage and pain that corroborated the reality of the jailer, is addressing another reality, in other tongues. The people who think of themselves as White have th

he had far more firsthand experience with the poor and with minorities than do most urban elites. His writings are therefore focused on classism rather than racism as being the quintessential American divide.

when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him "Booker Washington,"

He wore an archaically conservative dark-gray suit whose boxy look might have been actual flannel, and his dress shoes’ shine was dazzling when the classroom’s overhead fluorescents hit them at the proper angle. He seemed lithe and precise; his movements had the brisk economy of a man who knows time is a valuable asset.

For some questioners, my book is more authentic and acceptable insofar as I have been called a nigger and have otherwise been forced to encounter it in my own life. I make no such claim on my own behalf. I do not believe that my experiences entitle me to any more deference than that which is due on the strength of my writing alone. Experience is on

William F. Buckley had spent the previous decades decreeing what conservatism meant—and purging entire classes of dissenters who argued to the contrary.

What one’s imagination makes of other people is dictated, of course, by the laws of one’s own personality and it is one of the ironies of black-white relations that, by means of what the white man imagines the black man to be, the black man is enabled to know who the white man is.

belie

Jefferson in his racist generosity allowed that some infusion of European ancestry afforded Africans somewhat greater capacity, but it is quite clear he would have found me, credibly 81 percent African, lacking. I hold instead to what W. E. B. Du Bois said: “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balz