In the USA, it's harder for a black man with no criminal record to find a job than a white man with a criminal record, which is to say that race is actually a bigger factor than ex-felon status. But if you're both, it's almost impossible to find a job.

Let us invest less and less in war and tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, and more and more in jobs and schools for the other 99 percent.

I train my kids to dream really big and impossible dreams and to pursue them doggedly.

The beauty of being black in American society is that black has always been an inclusive definition. White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the old racial order. I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.

In this nation, the greatest of all nations, there are no second-class families. That is our great American conviction.