The Genius Is Making A Way Out

The Thing About Living In A Village At The Foot Of A Mountain Is That The World For You Becomes, Without Thinking About It, Self-contained. People Are Of Two Kinds, Really: From The Valley, And From Elsewhere.

It's Very Lonely Being A Prominent Black Intellectual At An Institution Where You're The Only Prominent Black Intellectual. That Was The Model That Was Followed In The Late 60s When Black Studies Started. You'd Get One Here And One There And One Here, Like Johnny Appleseed.

I Think That The Roots Of Racism Have Always Been Economic, And I Think People Are Desperate And Scared. And When You're Desperate And Scared You Scapegoat People. It Exacerbates Latent Tendencies Toward - Well, Toward Racism Or Homophobia Or Anti-semitism.

I Think That Is What We Do By Preserving And Telling Our Stories. If You Don't Tell Your Stories, Other People Will Tell Their Story About You. It's Important That We Nurture And Protect These Memories. Things Change. Existence Means Change. So, The Kind Of Precious Memories About Being Black For My Generation Won't Exist For My Kids' And Grandkids' Generations Unless We Preserve Them Through Fiction, Through Film, Through Comic Books, And Every Other Form Of Media We Can Possibly Utilize To Perpetuate The Story Of The Great African-american People.

My Family And Our Neighbors And Friends Thought Of Africa And Its Africans As Extensions Of The Stereotyped Characters That We Saw In Movies And On Television In Films Such As 'tarzan' And In Programs Such As 'ramar Of The Jungle' And 'sheena, Queen Of The Jungle.'