“Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.”

“Checking a box on a form for race—"Caucasian," "Hispanic," "African-American," "Native American," or "Asian-American"—is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, "American" is not a race, so labels such as "Asian-American" and "African-American" are still exhibits of our confusion of culture and race. For another thing, how far back does one go in history? Native Americans are really Asians, if you go back more than twenty or thirty thousand years to before they crossed the Bering land bridge between Asia and America. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace "Native American" with "African-Asian-Native American." Finally, if the Out of Africa (single racial origin) theory holds true, then all modern humans are from Africa. (Cavalli-Sforza now thinks this may have been as recently as seventy thousand years ago.) Even if that theory gives way to the Candelabra (multiple racial origins) theory, ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to "African-American.”

“A tricky bit of business, this believing in someone else. So tricky that we would never do it, if we did not want someone, someday, to believe in us, too.”

“Throughout this book I will use the terms African-American, black, and Negro interchangeably. There is rarely a logic to it, so please try not to overthink it.”

“I guess our fate is up to us now. And we’vebeen there before, of course. There’s something quite comfortingabout it in a strange way. We’ve learnt a few things. We know we’vegot a few things going for us. A bit of imagination, a bit of gutssometimes, a bit of spark.”

“It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen”