Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.

First of all the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society too.

Congressman Berg will repeatedly talk about Harry Reid and Barack Obama and I find it interesting because this morning when I woke up and brushed my teeth I looked in the mirror and I did not see a tall African-American skinny man. So let's make it clear that my priorities are North Dakota priorities.

It's a privilege to serve the poor to be servants of noble Africans but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film TV theatre in order to make it accessible to people.

This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

We need somebody who's got the heart the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.