D. Watkins speaks for himself: "I think we can have tough conversations, make each other upset"

To know Salon editor at large D. Watkins, whose third book, "We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America," came out earlier this week, is to know how deeply he cares about his community. I help people, I show love to my community, I care about people, but just because I'm a black person that knows how to put together a Word doc, it doesn't mean that's my title. It was the correspondent thing and I'm looking around the room and I see all these people on television, but I don't know them personally and a lot of them weren't really familiar with my work, which is cool, but it's still that whole energy of why are you here? We don't have to wait 20 years and then look back and be like, "Wow, everything's the same," because we'll know that I helped these kids with their resumes and now they're helping other people with their resumes or I help these people get connected to a place that can teach them a skill and now they have skills and they're sharing those skills. I know a lot of these kids are starting to get it now, but there's opportunity for us to make these relationships before these people become hashtags and I don't think we've taking advantage of it enough, because the people a lot of times and like I said, I'm not the voice, I'm a voice.