All you are ever told in this country
about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now,
in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and
re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in
America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you
have to decide whou you are, and force the world to deal with you, not
with its idea of you --James Baldwin
October, 1998