My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger arc of African-America….

For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately intrigued by 'Africa,' by the word itself, by its flora and fauna, its topographical diversit….

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's….

Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low..

I think literacy is everything..

In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of b….

My brother and I had a really privileged relationship with my parents... They treated us like adults..

All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native Amer….

America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to t….

The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been inter….

First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a….

Each individual has a responsibility to get out of bed, learn their ABCs, learn your math tables, not use race and racism as an excuse..

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it..

Everybody wants to have sex - you don't have to have a baby when you're 16. You don't have to do drugs. I think our Sunday schools should be turned i….

I thought, "why don't we be innovative and create something nobody had ever done before?" It was a huge hit and we immediately did a sequel with Chri….

Where do real conversations about citizenship occur? In our schools. Think about the things you learned in first grade. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," "I….

You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black gu….

Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie st….

People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a re….

I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but to do so in order to come out on….

The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case..