[ When I met Barack Obama] He says, I do a pretty good me myself - he said something like that. But he's - he is a close talker. He's a touchy guy.

I think that is also something he [Barack Obama], in the beginning of his presidency, he couldn't really explore and couldn't show. He had to be almost a one-dimensional, stoic leader during that first election.

Back when we were Neanderthals or whatever, we evolved to think along tribal lines. Survival was based on this idea of who are we and who are the others who will come and take our resources. I think it's an animal and a human thing that we all see in terms of us vs. them, and race is a very easy way to separate who is us and who is them.

Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.

A greater truth that I think we are faced with on a day-to-day basis as minorities is: We are the color of skin first and people second.

A part of being black in America and, you know, I presume being any minority, is constantly being told that we're being too aware of race somehow, we're obsessed with it or we're seeing racism where there just isn't racism.

It's very uncomfortable to talk about race. It often devolves before it begins.