My dad was a Marine. He was one of the Montford Point Marines. Those are the equivalent of the Tuskegee Airmen for Marines. He's a tough, tough guy. When I was 15 we had a fight, and I didn't speak to him for 10 years.
I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.
Where I grew up, people obviously knew my dad because it's a small place and he was the top player for Swinton - they'd go and watch him play, see him in the papers, so they knew he was black.
I could share an hour of warm camaraderie with Dad, then once I'd walked out the door, get the uncanny feeling I'd disappeared into the wings of his mind's stage, like a character no longer necessary to the ongoing story line.
My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs, and just being a black person, I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.
I do remember vividly sometime after puberty when I'd answer the phone at home and the callers began to say, 'Hi, Bill!' That's when I knew Dad and I had the same voice.
I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that'll give you the shirt off their back. And I've also found people that won't give you a piece of bread if you're starving to death.
I wonder about guys like Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann and Mark Levin. They're on such a mission. I mean, I love Hannity and Levin to death, but on the radio they're insane. How can you keep that up?
There is a list of things I'm not allowed to discuss at the dinner table! I am extraordinarily passionate about the Black Death, which is not something most people are into.
I want people to follow their dreams, yes... but I'm not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers... I want to show them that there's so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.
2013 was a year of myths falling apart. The myth of President Obama - a myth in which Obama was a messianic figure descending to bequeath health care, equality, and brotherhood on mankind - imploded. The myth of an America embracing the leftist socia...
To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.
But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?
I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthful...
We procured from an Indian a weasel perfectly white except the extremity of the tail which was black: great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them.
There's a great deal of disturbance in this country and how black feel about what happened in Katrina, and, you know, many of the comics, many of performers are in Las Vegas and New Orleans trying to raise money for what happened there.
Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.
I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.
Then, as the day progresses, depending on how the product is coming in - for instance, the fish man will fax us and say black bass is great - throughout the day, we'll also make judgment calls and adapt to what's available.
Like all rice, black rice is great at absorbing flavours, but it's just as happy to act as a satiny bed for a poached egg, say, if you want to keep things simple.
I don't look to a man to get pride in myself. It's not about having a black president, it's about having a good president, and I think that's the most important thing.
