One of the things that Africa needs, everybody seems to agree, is some measure of debt relief.

I want to see a Republican Party that is a big tent, inclusive party that welcomes all people to be Republicans and to contribute their ideas and support our position of providing opportunity to the American people. And I believe he goes in the opposite direction and deepens the divisions that are so pervasive in our society today.

Change comes from listening, learning, caring and conversation.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

I'm not really good at being predictive, so I guess I'm willing to be surprised.

Even marginal progress could be affected by investigations in Little Rock and in Washington.

We used to say in the black community that if somebody else caught a cold, we caught pneumonia.