I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.