Black lives matter: a perfectly straightforward statement, containing only three words. People who have mastered Kant, Hegel, Shakespeare, Marx, Freud and the Bible find this statement utterly impenetrable. The idea seems to threaten profound, barely conscious assumptions. A kind of panic paralyzes their features, as though they found themselves trapped on the edge of a steep place.
— only slightly edited, "A Letter from Harlem", James Baldwin, July 1960