The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.

We should be uncomfortable with the growing gaps in our society, and we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to these injustices.

No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid

My father was at the forefront of the economic justice movement - fighting for and with Black women who were on welfare for dignity and for enough support to feed their families, shelter their kids.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

In Western Australia, minerals are being dug up from Aboriginal land and shipped to China for a profit of a billion dollars a week. In this, the richest, 'booming' state, the prisons bulge with stricken Aboriginal people, including juveniles whose mothers stand at the prison gates, pleading for their release. The incarceration of black Australians here is eight times that of black South Africans during the last decade of apartheid.