Daily Dose

From The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, by Toni Morrison

TERRAIN

"The imaginative and historical terrain upon which early American writers journey is in very large measure shaped and determined by the presence of the racial Other. Statements to the contrary insisting upon the meaninglessness of race to American identity are themselves full of meaning. The world does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion."

From Black Matter(s)

Daily Dose

From The Devil Finds Work, by James Baldwin

AS CONCERNS

"As concerns Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, we can conclude that people have the right to marry whom they choose, especially if we know that they are leaving town as soon as dinner is over."

From Two, Who Saw Him Die? I, Said the Fly

Daily Dose

From I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, by David Chariandy

WOKE

"We woke to the stench of margarine burning in a pan, and one roommate jumped up to turn off the stove, another to open a window. Our dinner was ruined, our precious kitchen heat quickly disappearing, but my roommate with the shy-gentle eyes was laughing all the same. What was so funny? 'We made it here,' he explained."

From page 61

Daily Dose

From Canto General, by Pablo Neruda, translated by Jack Schmitt

LET

"Let the white youth, the black youth,
march singing and smiling
against the walls of gold,
against the manufacturer of hatred,
against the merchant of their blood,
singing, smiling and conquering."

From Let the Woodcutter Awaken, Part V

Daily Dose

From  The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian, by W. Kamau Bell

POINTED

 “I pointed to a Black man standing nearby and said, 'If I had said something up there on that stage today that was crazy, that Black man — even though he doesn't know me — would have pulled me aside and asked me what the fuck I was talking about. I told him that white people need to do the same thing.'”

Daily Dose

From Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

THE ROOT

"The root of all evil in this world is not the love of money but the addiction to illogical thinking.  Because with emotion-based decision-making comes the perpetuation of ignorance.  The person believes he or she already knows all that is needed to know through what he or she would call 'common sense' or 'spiritual guidance.'  That conveniently removes any responsibility for learning facts or applying logic."

From Chapter One, the Broom of the System

Daily Dose

From The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, by Michael Eric Dyson

RACE

“Race is the thing that we cannot seem to do without -- and the thing that we cannot get rid of.”

From the Introduction

If She Were Alive Today...

New from Scholastic!

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #40

Daily Dose

From Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin

THERE IS

"There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation.  The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now."

From Faulkner and Desegregation

Beyond Spokane

Daily Dose

From Nobody Knows My Name, by James Baldwin

PUT IT ANOTHER WAY

"Or perhaps I ought to put it another way: the things that most white people imagine they can salvage from the storm of life is really, in sum, their innocence."

From The Black Boy and the White Boy