This was, in a much clearer way, an argument I'd made in a conversation we had Sunday about how some brothers and sisters relate to one another. It is important to note the degree to which black people in particular, and progressive people in general, are alienated and estranged from communities which would sustain and support us. We are often homeless. Our struggles against a sense of nothingness and attempts to reduce us to nothing are ongoing. That sense of home can only be found in our construction of those communities of resistance bell talks about and the solidarity we can experience within them.
Renewal comes through participating in community.
That is the reason so many folks continue to go to church. In religious experience they find a sense of renewal, a sense of home. In community one can feel that we are moving forward, that struggle can be sustained. And then West dropped this particular pearl, which I thought somebody might find useful. Homogeneity is dogmatic imposition, pushing your way of life, your way of doing things onto somebody else.