“Whatever else Black Americans may be, we have defined the past. It is our experience with capture, enslavement, emancipation, segregation, and redemption that will celebrate this living and save our souls. We will define the future. It is our willingness to forgive that both perplexes and confronts those who think they can braid their hair, or drop their pants and know something about the splendor of being who we are…Sure, they will take [Marvin] Gaye’s anguish and make a commercial out of it for Radio Shack just like they took ‘So You Want A Revolution’ to tell you to buy Nikes. But we’re still here, still laughing, still loving, still deciding what looks good and what sounds right. We’re still hugging ourselves, still making joyful noise. Still finding a way to be human and humane. It is not, after all, the blackness that has caused our loss of vision, making us turn and turn in this tunnel of despair; it is the blackness that is showing us a way out.” -Nikki Giovanni