"My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn't matter as much as how I would be perceived."

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When you study our greatest artists, you will find that they give us a key to understand how to deal with each other, and that our bloodlines are intertwined. It's not hyphenated America. That there is an America, and it is expressed in those arts. It gives us a key to figure out how to negotiate with each other, and it tells us actually who we are.

— Wynton Marsalis