African-Americans who might have disagreed with candidate Obama's left-of-center politics voted for him in 2008 because electing a candidate with brown skin was too historic an opportunity to miss.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals but even as I withdrew into this reading I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

I have a pet lizard named Puff five goldfish - named Pinky Brain Jowels Pearl and Sandy an oscar fish named Chef two pacus an albino African frog named Whitey a bonsai tree four Venus flytraps a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

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.

An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

During the days of segregation there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

An old African leader says about leadership he says that leadership should never be shared it should always remain in the hands of the dispossessed people. We will lead the revolution.

Take for example the African jungle the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old the sick the wounded the weak the very young but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey you had better be strong.