One Must Learn How To Be Black

There Haven't Been Fundamental Structural Changes In America. There's Been A Very Important Symbolic Change And That Is The Election Of Barack Obama. But The Only Black People Who Truly Live In A Post-racial World In America All Live In A Very Nice House On 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

You Notice Patterns. White Guests Often Are Mortified - That Word Again - When They Learn Their Ancestors Owned Slaves. But I've Never Had A Black Guest Who Was Upset To Learn About White Ancestry That Probably Involved Forced Sexual Relations.

I Rebel At The Notion That I Can't Be Part Of Other Groups, That I Can't Construct Identities Through Elective Affinity, That Race Must Be The Most Important Thing About Me. Is That What I Want On My Gravestone: Here Lies An African American?

Since The Day Martin Luther King Was Killed, The Black Middle Classes Have Almost Quadrupled, But The Percentage Of Black Children Living On Or Below The Poverty Line Is Almost The Same.

In A One-hour Documentary, You Can Tell Maybe Ten Stories. That's How The Documentary Is Structured. I Wrote To Forty Of The Greatest Historians Of Both African And African-american History, And Hired Them As Consultants. I Had Them Submit What They Thought Were The Indispensable Stories, The Ones They Felt This Series Absolutely Had To Include.