I don't think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means I'm being effective, because I'm not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.

People in the age of [President] Obama don't dress like they did in the age of [Lyndon] Johnson. That's for sure.

Let me just say that we are under the consent decree. There are people in our city [Baltimore] along with the police department and advocates who believe that this is absolutely the right thing to do.

So (if) some cracker come and tell you 'Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks.

I cannot imagine where we would have been without BET. Many like me who operate in black America can only get our balanced story told nationally on BET talk shows.

The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.

I just released an op-ed in the "Washington Post" that talks about providing an I.D. so that everyone can have an I.D., primarily, the social security card, a picture would be put on that card, and a president can certainly by executive order make this happen so that people will not need a special I.D. They`ll have one to vote.