Liberalism has become a moral vaccine that immunizes people against stigmatization.

Most important, [research on affirmative action] has completely failed to show that affirmative action ever closes the academic gap between minorities and whites. And failing in this, affirmative action also fails to help blacks achieve true equality with whites - the ultimate measure of which is parity in skills and individual competence. Without this underlying parity there can never be true equality in employment, income levels, rates of home ownership, educational achievement and the rest.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

No matter how accomplished we may be, just any little white person can come up and say, 'Well, you wouldn't be here, if it weren't for Affirmative Action.' You put power in white people's hands, and then they use it against you. It's a trick bag.

Barack Obama's strategy is to get away from anything having to do with race as quickly as he can. His fear is that that might open a Pandora's Box.

My individuality is my gift to my people.

I would love to see us, as blacks, get to the place where we say, 'I'm not going to play race games with you. Here I am. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.'