"As a black man, you get attuned to racism when you're, like, two years old. The antenna for it starts working when you're real young. That's why you've got to come up with some way to deal with it early. First, you've got to understand what you're up against, and then you've got to come up with some way to keep yourself sane." He said some wise musician friends gave him some advice: "They told me to develop a spiritual center so that I wouldn't allow any external elements define who I was. When you get down to it, racism is about people not being impressed enough with themselves--trying to make themselves feel like giants by making everybody else feel like a midget, having someone to look down on so they can feel better about themselves. And it's a terrible feeling for the person being looked down on, knowing that somebody seeing you, from two blocks away already has a blanket indictment of who you are as a human being. So it's essential that you don't let anybody define who you are. You have to define yourself. Develop your own inner strength, so that you're not reacting defensively when those external forces try to undermine you."
I really like his advice on cultivating a "spiritual center" that does not react to external forces.
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