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We need to have a conversation about the fact that black faces are not as visible as they should be, that there is huge inequality everywhere in terms of race.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

I maintain that the period during the first half of the 1990s, the period in which rising inequality reached its peak, was a period in which we came very, very close to a demagogic immobilization of racism in this society.

As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.

That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

I still think that we have a hesitance to talk about things racial. And I think we do it at our detriment. We go from incident to incident, and we have spikes in which race becomes something that we talk about, as opposed to talking about race in those less contentious times when I think we might make more progress.

I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.