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.

You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.

I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed.

When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years.

I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, and I would cut on the TV, and I would watch a show like 'The Wonder Years,' or I would watch, you know, some other show like 'Family Ties.'

As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.