I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands.

We can't all work in the inner city. And, I don't even think that it is incumbent upon an African-American intellectual to be concerned in their work with problems of race and class. It's just one of the things, that we here at the DuBois Institute, are concerned about.

I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black?

A more humane form of capitalism is about the best I think we can get. Which might sound very reformist or conservative, but that's basically where I am.