Suburbanization is not the only one of the most important trends of the coming century. It is one of the most important metaphors of where our heads are at these days. Everyone wants to go off with their own group, do their own thing, cut themselves off from everyone else, and cease to be accountable. Every possible sub-group now has its own inward-looking magazine and organization. I want to live in an America without ghettos or suburbs. pg. 11

Wanting to be down but not wanting to sacrifice for it--the way blacks have to sacrifice to be down with us--that's the age-old story of whites in black culture (let alone every other culture on the planet). We fall in love with black culture and the deeper we get, the more we hear with black ears, move with black limbs, see with black eyes. Over time and (what we imagine is much) tribulation, our striving becomes less transparent, less offensive, harder to laugh at. Then we get jobs as documenters, marketers, and even creators of something that used to be black music.

One day the rap audience will be as white as tables in a jazz club, and rap will become just another platform for every white ethnic group--not just the Irish--to express their suddenly funky selves. In the meantime, every Josh, Eric, Martay, Brian, Laramie, Chris, Frank, Andrew, Jamie, Alex, Sista PA and Upski of the white race plunges deeper in to a debt that we have no intention of trying to repay.
pg. 21

Of course there are many ways to view whites' role of hip-hop and not all of them are bad, and yes, we are individuals. But let me offer this advice to black artists: next time y'all invent something, you'd better try to find a way to control it financially, because we're going to want that shit. And since it's the 90's, you won't even get to here us say 'Thanks niggers'.
pg. 22

Salahdin memorizes all his rhymes; he has no home, nowhere to write them down. His voice seems to come from his chest, he summons it forth slow, off-beat, compelling, it erupts from his throat as from the throat of a volcano, he brings it down on you like the last punches of a fight, every blow falling in stupefying slow-motion. 'You feel I'm not fair/But still war was declared/Will you be rollin'?/Yeah, in a wheelchair.'

Salahdin himself now rolls in a wheelchair. Drunk one night while trying to enter an apartment by kicking in the air conditioner (similar to the way he tried to enter my apartment a few years back in a desperate moment), Salahdin slipped off a fire escape 'somehow', and survived the 11-story fall by grabbing shit on the way down. In his hospital bed, he reads Poe, and fills a notebook with new lyrics.
pg. 58

The urban frontier, where raw city meets raw wilderness, is an antidote to the incompleteness of the segregated city life. For the sheltered bourgeoisie, it means an introduction to the forbidden urban underworld. For the sheltered poor, it means an introduction to the unfamiliar natural habitat. For all, it exists more than anything as a frontier of the mind, a living monument to the deepest fears and fascinations of a segregated city.

Alas, it is a simple adventure, simple crossing of barriers or frontiers, that dull children from sheltered lives really yearn for when they turn to Nintendo, Great America, or the latest in commercially packaged entertainment. The forbidden domains of the city are where the real adventure lies. The greatest opportunities in the world to explore the unknown, meet amazing people, and become cosmopolitan cost only a CTA token. So send the children across the sea; send them off to college. The tour begins in three minutes.
pg. 72

And sorry to be getting all personal and shit, but I happen to like public transportation. Cars keep people apart, public transportation brings people together. Cars are the leading cause of drive-by shootings, drunk-driving, pollution, asthma, potbellies, the greenhouse effect, and guess what? car accidents.

If cars are inflaming all these problems: violence, pollution, segregation--then part of the solution to these problems is public transportation, the CTA.