[The lawmakers said that progress has been made since then, but that more needs to be done.] What a new commission would have to do is more complex than the Kerner Commission, ... It's more complex than passing laws that this House and the Senate passed.

I am not among those who engage in nostalgia, because I think that locks you into a moment in time without thinking about where you are, what needs to be done now.

shootouts at Easter egg hunts -- that's what it comes down to.

There is no reason to repeat bad history.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.