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After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

American Sign Language requires a lot of facial and body expression.

The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.

There's a way that white people and black people spoke in the '70s that is nothing like how they speak now. They spoke from a soul, actually. There's a singsongy way of walking and talking that's just different now.

At town meetings, you can see the shy folks, the ones who have trouble sounding off in public, leaning against the back wall or bending over their knitting. On talk radio, those people are invisible, but they're there. It's a mistake to think that the blowhards who call in speak for the nation.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

In the South we experienced, you know, some black kids who gave us a hard time because - cause 'you talk white.' We didn't talk white. We talked fairly proper. Plus, we had a Midwestern accent, so we didn't have a Southern accent, either. So it wasn't really talking white; it was talking different.

The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight. These men were very kind.

We did not know there were other people besides the Indian until about one hundred winters ago, when some men with white faces came to our country.

Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.