African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans.

But 18 years after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, there still remains unfinished work to completely rectify and close this regrettable chapter in our Nation's history.

The good news is that parents are the leading influence on kids' decision not to drink alcohol.

As of 2002, two million Latino adults had been diagnosed with diabetes.

According to Teenage Research Unlimited, 51 percent of 13-15 year olds say they will be faced with making a decision regarding alcohol in the next three months.

Winning the peace is harder than winning the war.

February 19, 1942, is the year in which Executive Order 9066 was signed, and this was the order that called for the exclusion and internment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast during World War II.

We cannot undo the past in this misguided war in Iraq.

I hate to say it but I think it has become very obvious that our system for devising trade agreements, so very important to this country's functioning around the world, has not only broken, but it has broken completely.

Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease, where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function, the end result of which is kidney failure.

The Smithsonian museums are among this country's most endearing treasures and I look forward to helping maintain and enhance their coveted works of art.

It is critical that parents and other trusted adults initiate conversations with kids about underage drinking well in advance of the first time they are faced with a decision regarding alcohol.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the first use of alcohol typically begins at age 12.

We are on pace this year to have a trade deficit that is larger than $800 billion. We have never faced that before, but we continue to put forward trade agreements like these that leave us naked to competition that is neither free nor fair.

According to the American Heart Association, the prevalence of hypertension in African Americans in the United States is among the highest in the world.

Diabetes occurs at twice the rate in the African American community as it does in white Americans.

Individuals with kidney disease who are able to obtain treatment early experience a higher quality of life and are able to maintain more of their day-to-day activities, including keeping their jobs.

Today, we have a trade regime which has led to the largest trade deficits this country has ever experienced.

African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans.

As a regent, I hope to bring that important perspective of a typical family visitor in combination with my background as a Member of Congress and a proponent of the Smithsonian's efforts to reach all Americans.

Having passion does not mean you have to descend into bickering and fighting.

I will fight like the dickens to protect Social Security.

If we finally chose as a country to take responsibility for the wars that we believe we must engage in, and rather than borrow money to exercise that authority to go to war, we actually pay for these wars, that would save us over a trillion dollars, because that's what we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan - all through borrowed money.

Shame on me if I don't try to do more with what I have. It would be... a terrible thing to waste this opportunity to try to make a difference.

This is precisely why you choose to run for office and get elected. You're asking the people to let you be their voice. I don't think there is a more powerful and intense experience than the opportunity to be the voice of the 307 million people living in this country.

We have a tax code that allows groups to use their political operations within the tax code, under the guise of a charity, to use undisclosed millions of dollars to do political campaigns.

We need to make investment to get the economy going again, to give the private sector the confidence.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.

Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.

I think one of the political problems we have in this country is the perspective that all soccer moms think alike, all African-Americans think alike.

The adoring crowds and overwhelming Democratic support in the 2008 election was based largely on joy at jettisoning Bush and the appeal of electing a superbly qualified charismatic African American leader.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights - compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.

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.

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.

Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

From the time of independences until the end of the Cold War, in spite of the participation of a considerable number of African states in the non-aligned movement, everyone in fact chose to align with one or another of the two major blocks.