Dear Dr. Perry,
As I read your beautifully authored Prophets of the Hood, I find myself consistently surprised by the depth and breadth of your analysis. While I've never doubted hip hop and rap music were worthy of academic exploration, I also never imagined studying them could yield such robust and intriguing findings. But this is problematic--I would never be surprised that research exploring classical music or any kind of indigenous music would result in extensive insights.
One of the most pervasive themes in AAWL has been our tendency to regard anything black as inherently unsophisticated or undesirable. In the context of mixed race people (or those who could pass as such), for example, we've agreed that "black" is generally an unsatisfactory answer because we've been conditioned to believe what makes one beautiful cannot be one's blackness. Similarly, in this case, I think what surprises me about your book is the caliber of scholastic insight that can come from studying something so black. I hate that I've been conditioned to think this way and I hate that most people who've been privy to the same conditioning will never take the time to understand how fallacious this line of thinking truly is.
I'm sorry for being surprised by the quality of your research. I'm sorry for being surprised by your eloquent and powerful style of writing. I'm sorry for being surprised to find out that you graduated from Harvard Law School at 27. I'm sorry for being surprised that you had a PhD and an LLM too. I'm sorry for being surprised at the legitimacy of a black woman studying black people and black things to such an extent. I'm sorry that I underestimated you, and I'm sorry that American society continues to underestimate us.
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