The young men we're talking about have been affected by all kinds of sources including historical racism, increasing changes in the economy from manufacturing to high technology, jobs going overseas, immigration.

We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?

If I was in a room with a bunch of skinheads talking about racism, then I would be disturbed, but after we finished a take, we were normal people again.

The trouble is that racial stereotypes, unfavourable to everyone but white men of northwest European extraction, were completely accepted, and indeed, scarcely noted in those days of only forty years ago [the 1930s] (except perhaps by the members of the groups victimized thereby).

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

The young black man is on a dangerous trajectory. We need to come up with ideas on how to resolve these issues.