“Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.”

“Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.”

“The difference between educated people and uneducated people is that educated people have been opened up to the notion that you can disagree without fighting; whereas uneducated people, in conversation, seek to always agree--everybody agrees and agrees and that's considered basic social libation.”

“[I] would argue that native-born blacks are so vastly less "African" than actual Africans that calling ourselves 'African American' is not only illogical but almost disrespectful to African immigrants. Here are people who were born in Africa, speak African languages, eat African food, dance in African ways, remember African stories, and will spiritually always be a part of Africa -and we stand up and insist that we, too, are 'African' because Jesse Jackson said so?”

“People's sense of how they talk tends to differ from the reality.”