"When I talk about the field of black studies I think it's extremely important that we create scholarship that we can give back to the people that they can really engage I think it's important for us to be a think tank to help black folk solve their problems But to also understand that a lot of the pontificating and the juxtaposing and critiquing and amalgamating that we do It doesn't register with them. And so we got to give them the space to kind of make the decisions for themselves"