“There were an amazing number of pressures trying to shape me when I was a child. There are for everyone — we’ve all got pressures. But to grow up Black in America at this point in history is to be placed under a particular and intense set of pressures attempting to shape who we are. It’s been an interesting experience, and not necessarily one I’d recommend.

I feel we all develop a shell or a spine to help us deal with these pressures. Martial arts helped me develop a spine, something that supported me from within. Blacks in America are outnumbered 10 to 1. When I was growing up where I did, in South Central Los Angeles, there was a war going on. There were no referees, and I was on the losing side of the conflict. I was being told I was nothing, in a thousand ways, every day. I had to look inside myself and find answers to the questions “Who am I? What am I?"

—	Steven Barnes, from an interview with Strange Horizons, 2002.