“In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.”

I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.

Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.

My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.

They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.

I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.

Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.

Racism is, among other things.

I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .

I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.

The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.

I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.

The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.

They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities.

We know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each others honesty

Cinema has no boundaries, we all belong to the same artistic community.

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.

I grew up in an artists community in New York, in a building that was government-subsidised for artists. No one made any money, but they made art for the sake of art.

We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.

We are carrying collectively a lot of trauma, especially those of us in the African-American community. And if we’re not careful, it’ll overtake us, and we’ll self-destruct.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.