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Americans have their issues with skin colour, even within the black community, with light and dark skin; it's crazy - but no one's oblivious to it.

I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors.

I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.

People notice if you are black. People notice if you are female. We are certainly not either colorblind or gender-blind in this country, so I'm not suggesting that it isn't a factor. But I think in the final analysis, people will take a look at the positions, and they'll take a look at the issues.

I don't even know where to start in terms of people having such an issue about color, especially being dark. I just think on different levels it's ignorance; it's no belief, no confidence, it's insecurity, so you want to inflict it on somebody else.

I have never been able to discover anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient - in America.

I am definitely a person of color.

It had never occurred to me that my colour - or lack of it - was an issue for some people, but then I moved to Sydney, and apparently it was. People look at me and don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. Thankfully, my mother raised me well in knowing where I come from and who I am, and I'm proud of that.

I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.