Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that's chewing up.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

I've always thought I had pretty good instincts for people. There is a short list of people I've worked with over my career with whom I've not been able to distinguish easily between the public persona and the real private person.

We've been taught in America that big is best. That's why people have to believe that they must live in the greatest country in the world, which is absolutely idiotic.

Americans don't bother to notice anybody else in the world.

Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it.

Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis - it is protective, it takes care of you. That's what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor - all of that - without doing vast damage to those people.