“Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.”

That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.

And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.

The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.

The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.

Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.

Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.

Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.

All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.

[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.

If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.

The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.

To become a token woman – whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters – is to become something less than a man.

No human is perfect; we all have our hidden sins. Hypocrisy is to delude yourself into denying your own sins and allow arrogance to grow within you.