I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.
What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.
If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart.
You know, people'd always ask 'Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?' They never seen the house I'm running from.
Those companies that don't see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn't see the field, they missed talent and growth. The same is true in the tech industry.
So here we are today with a new conversation. When University of Georgia plays Georgia Tech, it's uniform color versus skin color. We have - we've overcome that level of racial fear.
Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.
In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.
Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.
Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.
Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.
There's a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.
If you think black people have a motivation problem, open up a Wal-Mart and advertise a thousand jobs. Watch 5,000 people show up.
If the American people in a matter of months can love the people of Kuwait, whom they have not seen, they can love the people of our nation's capital just as well.