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Anytime you're saying that a person will be thinking one way or another or biased one way or another just based upon race, I just think it's certainly going to be subject to that criticism of racism.

The fact that hardly anyone is ever prepared to admit to racist behaviour is perhaps a sort of strength: it speaks to the fact that racism is socially inadmissible.

Black leadership has to recognize that principles more than speech, character more than a claim, is greater in advancing the cause of our liberation than what has transpired thus far.

Racists are irrational and illogical in their attempts to justify their prejudices.

Those close to Mr. Obama say he grows irritated at being misunderstood - not just by opponents who insinuate that he caters to African-Americans, but also by black lawmakers and intellectuals who fault him for not making his presidency an all-out assault on racial disparity.

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.

Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias rather than exaggerate them.

That line, about half of somebody's supporters being deplorables, was maybe the worst line I've ever heard in politics. You never - even when you're running against a bunch of racists, you never take off against the voters. It was a politics 101 foible.

We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that.