I had to learn to not be so hard. And I had a wife and, at that time, a partner when Samori was born, and for most of Samori’s life, a partner, who, for whatever reason, did not have to learn that and was very tender and very, very soft with him.
If your response to the first black president is to say they weren’t born in this country… you might be a white supremacist.
Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There’s cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There’s an incredible amount.
If you are attempting to study American history, and you don’t understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.
In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.
There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.
When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who’ve been dead for 100 years.
There is some group of Americans who are really, really curious to understand how we ended up at this point, where every week it seems like you can turn on your TV and see some sort of abuse being heaped on black people.
I’m a writer. My job is to speak what – that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that’s good. If it doesn’t, that’s too bad.
I enjoy the challenge of trying to say things beautifully. The message is secondary in that sense. Obviously, I have something that I want to say that’s very, very important to me – but the process of actually crafting it is essential.
When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I’m always surprised. I don’t know if it’s my low expectations for white people or what.
We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I’ve been among those kids, it ultimately is fear.
People sort of went crazy when ‘BTWAM’ came out. I’m happy a bunch of people read it. I’m happy it touched so many people. I’m less happy that it became an object for certain folks or was discussed that way. I’m less happy that journalists started scrolling through my kid’s Instagram account.
It meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that I felt pop culture should look like.
I try to write in a way that makes people feel things.
I am always surprised people are surprised that people haven’t read things.
I don’t know that white people need to be ‘allies’ so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. ‘Ally’ presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.
There are plenty of African-Americans in this country – and I would say this goes right up to the White House – who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy.
I wouldn’t argue that Mitt Romney is a white supremacist.
It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.
We’ve got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.
Chaos is what we have. That is what I believe.
With George Bush’s policies, I could make an argument for how they affect black people in a negative way. You know what I mean? But I wouldn’t argue that he’s a white supremacist.
When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don’t understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.
When you read a comic book, there’s a space between what’s happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That’s not true of movies, where you see everything.
I wasn’t the biggest Captain America fan, but increasingly, I see him as a great character. Winter Soldier really got into what it meant to actually represent America.
When you write, you’re inside the project. You can’t really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.
The two endorsements I’m most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.
When you know that people know who you are, you are always working – and not the work you want to do. You are sort of performing, because you know they are looking – or at least glancing – at you.
From last century’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’ to this century’s ‘Gods and Generals,’ Hollywood has likely done more than any other American institution to obstruct a truthful apprehension of the Civil War and, thus, modern America’s very origins.
I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23.
I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That’s not a mistake.
I started writing regularly for ‘The Atlantic’ roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated.
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