Advocating for quality addiction treatment has become a passion, and it's the most rewarding thing that someone like me can do. People were there to help me when I needed it, so I've made it my goal to pay it forward.

I didn't make the Pro Bowl until my seventh year I think in the NFL. We continually got better.

Everyone knows someone who is struggling with a mental health issue, whether it's depression, trauma or substance abuse. It affects everyone, so we all have a stake in making sure good treatment is available.

It's not as if I dislike Michigan. I have a lot of respect for the university - not only the athletic department but how they educate young people. The only reason I dislike them is because they are the No. 1 rival for OSU.

Bill Romanowski was one of the most feared players to play, not only because of his intensity, but because he played through the whistle and after the whistle.

I kind of follow in the tradition of some folks - some thinkers and scholars I really look up - who reject the idea of intellectual compartmentalization.

I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic, but it's true.

We inculcate young people with the message that if they don't succeed, it is merely of their own doing. They should have worked harder, we say. They should have made better decisions. This message is especially present in communities of color.

While violence is part of what it means to be part of the black diaspora in the United States, that is not all it means to be black.

People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.

My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.

If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is.

New Orleans taught me that mourning takes many different forms. Where I'm from, mourning is spirited. It is loud.

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

Advocating for affirmative action through the prism of diversity may be more politically palatable, but it will inevitably yield insufficient results.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.

In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation.

In sixth grade, my status as a Boy Scout was not something I went out of my way to share. In fact, I spent most of my adolescence attempting to keep it a secret from those who might use it as a source of derision. The off-brown collared shirt and forest-green sash were not something I would have ever been caught wearing in front of my friends.

Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums are pulled from the shelves. Home videos of prepubescent siblings in matching pajamas dance across the television screen.

Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.

If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all.

Being incarcerated does not mean being devoid of the capacity to learn, grow, and think, and it's critical that prisons provide spaces where learning can be both cultivated and encouraged.

Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being.