“In the NBA, as in nowhere else in America, white people are utterly beholden to black people, and they're not about to let us off that easily. It's a kind of very mild payback for the last 500 years.”

American author

David Shields is an American author of 25 books. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, and criticism, and he is known for books such as Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, and Black Planet. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, twice an NEA Fellow, and a winner of the PEN Revson Award. He has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the PEN West Award, and has served as senior contributing editor of Conjunctions.