Darius Dunlap

Darius Dunlap

they weren’t at all smarter

I tried not to feel intimidated when classroom conversation was dominated by male students, which it often was. Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything…

Unique

“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.” —Franklin Thomas, President and CEO of the Ford Foundation

Self-Deception

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named —…

The Vitality of Language

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the…

I Am Not My Hair

I am not my hair (I am not my hair), I am not this skinI am not your expectations, no (Hey)I am not my hair, I am not this skinI am a soul that lives within (Hey)I am not my hair, I am not this skinI am not your expectations (I am not your expectations,…