Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.
If you want to know if racism is a problem in your country, you might not want to ask white people.
Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.
Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.
Obama sees the world in two ways: from the black perspective and from the white perspective. He was raised as a black man, whose culture he has self-consciously adopted. But he was reared largely by his white grandparents. He lived a kind of racially bipartisan experience, and he will be able to speak a language that resonates with both communities.
Bear in Mind...that all Histories from the Rock at Plymouth, and Jamestown to the present time, have been made by white men, and a man who tells his own story, is always right until the adversary's tale is told.
I'm a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve. I guess if I'm forced to find a good side, I'm glad that people are talking about an issue that hasn't really been discussed all that much. I'm glad that people are talking about it from the black perspective and the white perspective.
It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
Even though we are a nation that's becoming a minority country, we still have this view where everything is seen through the prism of the dominant culture, which really means white.
When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused.
