I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.

The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we’ve changed this country before.

A lot of the issues that I see, it is not an either-or situation.

We have come from a time of the large-scale, planned, Al Qaeda-style attacks, to the encouragement of lone wolves: Fort Hood, Chattanooga. To the encouragement of people to act on their own.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools.

I've always viewed the Paris Agreement as a starting point. If you look at all the commitments that have been made by all the countries, it's still not sufficient to deal with the very dangerous situation we face. What it has done is that it created an architecture whereby as technology improves, as we find new clean sources of energy, as we make our economies more efficient, then gradually we can turn up the dial and improve the outcomes of Paris.

And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth.