Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem? To have your very body and the bodies of your children to be assume to be criminal, violent, malignant.

The Souls of Black Folk (ed. Signet Classics, 1969)