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.

I knew that there were black people in Africa of course unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.'

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.

I am on my way to Ghana tomorrow morning and you just need to know that this Administration is very focused on doing all we can to promote economic development in this part of the world in Africa throughout Africa North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won't make people enjoy life more and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa - and it's about getting a balance.

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.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa in the late 1950s I thought what a wonderful marriage this was biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

I'll love you dear I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

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.