Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.
My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.
I grew up in Los Angeles when the racial tensions between blacks and Mexicans were very high. Gang violence was very prevalent.
We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.
We are of the opinion that an important and irreversible process is taking place among the white population. Just as with the blacks, the whites, too, are currently overcoming a psychological barrier.
Most blacks will argue that they excel because of hard work, because of intellect, determination, sweat, blood, tears and risk.
Mandatory minimum sentencing has disproportionately affected blacks, Hispanics and others who often don't have the financial means to fight back.
Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.
Few would deny that blacks have become very dominant in athletics: football, basketball, track, now dominant in tennis and dominant in golf.
For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.