Where do real conversations about citizenship occur? In our schools. Think about the things you learned in first grade. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," "I pledge allegiance to the flag," "America the Beautiful."

We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of "The African Americans."

Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system.