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The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism. Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments.

When I was growing up, our nation was partitioned: Blacks were segregated by law in the South and largely by custom in the North, though it, too, had segregation laws. Our best universities had quota systems. Many white communities had real estate covenants to keep nonwhites out.

Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!

Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.

We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.

Anything that could be conceived of that would separate black people from white people was devised and codified by someone in some state in the South. There were colored and White waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know.

Long before gun control was touted as 'common sense' measures, the concept was promoted as a means to keep ethnic populations in an unequal position while assuaging the fears of whites.

It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.

Segregation, in a sense, helped create and maintain black solidarity.

I talked about the barriers created by monopolies. I said that it was the role of government to break up these monopolies and that we couldn't do it alone.