"And Huey Newton would comment. 'Yes. Mandate Number Three is this demand from the Black Panther Party speaking for the black community. Within the mandate we admonish the racist police force…' I kept wishing that he would talk about himself, hoping to break through the wall of rhetoric, but he seemed to be one of those autodidacts for whom all things specific and personal present themselves as mine fields to be avoided even at the cost of coherence, for whom safety lies in generalization."— Joan Didion, The White Album, 30
