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.

I decided to live as an individual and as I grew older, and thought more, and read more and experienced more, my views became more conservative. But my group is liberal. Not only that, they say, 'If you're not liberal and not a Democrat, you're not black. If you're conservative, you're a sellout.' Here, then, I'm living with that kind of a pressure against my individuality.

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.

I know that whatever power Shelby Steele has always comes out of the writing. I'm not the greatest television pundit or the best public speaker, so it's my writing that's most important.

What the Clintons have always done is embraced challenging. They can't have enough photo opportunities with Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. They communicate to blacks that they agree with their challenging identity. So, in a sense, Hillary is blacker than Barack Obama. Their alignment with this black identity makes them 'black' in a metaphorical sense, I guess.

We have laws on the books. If somebody's discriminating against you, I strongly advocate suing them. That's the most effective thing you can do in terms of fighting racism. People understand that they're vulnerable to lawsuit.

My problem with Obama is that he's not a new paradigm; he's an old paradigm. A new paradigm would be somebody like Harold Ford [former Democratic Congressman from Tennessee] or Michael Steele [former Republican Lieutenant Governor of Maryland], no relation, both of whom present themselves as individuals, and don't seem to wear a mask. They don't 'bargain;' they don't 'challenge.' So, I see them as fresh, and as evidence of what I hope will be a new trend.