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.

The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in.

I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'

I would say as a journalist, I would envision travelling to other countries that have had to reckon with their past and see how they've done it: what worked, what didn't work, finding characters that would tell the story of how that process was done.

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.

We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that.