Quotes about race-relations

We do not admire their president.We know why the White House is white.We do not find their children irresistibleWe do not agree they should inherit the earth.

J.W. and Roy didn’t just snatch the childhood away from Emmett they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi.

Anyone intent on moral clarity might want to find another book and, in fact, might not want to go anywhere near the enduring chasm of race in the United States.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-clas

It is a big deal to work with people who are different from you. And if you're white or of a higher class,no matter what race you are, you'll probably mess up. Maybe get yelled at. But there are worse things. Like keeping your dignity safe at home, while the world goes to hell.

Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a

I've always looked at America like a foster mother doing it only for the check. At any minute, I just knew she'd be ready to give up on me.

Holocaust survivors and their descendants are supposed to hate those who oppressed and killed them and their people. Black people are not. This is how anti-blackness works.

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

white is not always light and black is not always dark.

Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples - while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.But Americans, I think, have a great advantage. To renew our unity, we only need to remember our values. We have never been held together by blood or background. We are bound by things of the spirit – by shared commitments to common ideals.

I know that no matter how liberal or progressive I profess to be, no matter how successfully, how diligently I seek to be enlightened and nuanced in my understanding of the world and those around me, I know that there still is a tiny, virulent nugget, a germ of prejudice that exists deep within me — the product of those stereotypes and awful jokes of childhood and adolescence, and that it must always be powerfully held at bay by reason, understanding and love.

Take the side of truth, you'll be right every time.

It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.

It's no longer time to take sides for or against race, rather sides against those who still do.

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective." "Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture.""Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners an

Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it's bred indifference.

She learned early on, in her adopted country, that race was an easy excuse to stop awkward explanations. People hesitated to probe into such a sensitive matter.

Race is there. You're tire of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.

There is nothing like race, is there?

Ask anyone concerned with race to fast, and take note of the response you receive.

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical check

At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity--like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view.

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)

Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and

Pride is the problem. Everyone wants to be right so badly they overlook the "rights" of others.

You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical an

The spectacle of the shooting suggest an event out of time, as if the killing of black people with white-supremacist justification interrupts anything other than regular television programming. But Dylan Storm Roof did not create himself from nothing. He as grown up with the rhetoric and orientation of racism.

I DREAM OF A CHARCOAL CHALKY AFRICAI am as black as charcoalBut that is only my skin colorI don’t need to see hacked white bodiesTo know that we are the same on the insideI feel the same anguish and disgust for the innocentMurdered black South Africans during apartheidMurdered white South Africans post-apartheidWe might not be there to fight apartheid era atrocities But we are here now and must prevent post-apartheid atrocities Murdering innocent whites will not bring back murdered blacksI chall

No one in the world -- in the entire world -- know more -- knows Americans better or, odd as this may sound, loves them more than the American Negro. This is because he has had to watch you, outwit you, deal with you, and bear you, and sometimes even bleed and die with you, ever since we got here, that is, since both of us, black and white, got here -- and this is a wedding. Whether I like it or not, or whether you like it or not, we are bound together forever. We are part of each other.

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

Under the white population of the United States of America only the reactionary classes oppress the black population. Under no circumstance can they represent the workers, farmers and revolutionary intellectuals and other enlighted people who form the majority of the white population.

The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to.

You ever think about the noose?''I been thinking about the noose since I was born.

I'm too old to be ignorant as I am." --Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality.

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this -- which will not be tomorrow and will not be

It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.

You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

Some people say, "What difference does it make what color the winemaker is that made the wine? Judge the wines off their own merit." Like, of course. And I do believe that my wine is judged off its own merit. But the fact is that when you walk into places and people can't believe that you're the principal or you're the owner or you made the wine, it's mind-blowing to me some days. It's like, wow. That's why we need to continue talking about it.

Many of my ex-girlfriends were habitual half-asian daters. These women considered half-asian men 'exotic,' 'sexy,' and 'just-like-Keanu Reeves-in-the-Matrix. I consider these stereotypes appropriate because I got laid.

In the midst of combat, we learned a great deal about mankind and its many different races, creeds and beliefs.

Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.

The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no

It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent."(p.88)...."Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall just

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to rise.

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americ

Whites saying 'make America white again' is like millionaires saying 'make the wealthy rich again.

You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.

Racism hurts everyone, including racists themselves.

If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself. As the master, or as a member of the dominant race, he has felt little compulsion to acknowledge or speak of it; the more painful it has grown the more deeply he has hidden it within himself. But the wound is there, and is a profound disorder, as great a damage in his mind as it is in his society.

If you see a group of people struggling over generations and you attribute those struggles to bad character, then you do not truly believe we are all created equally.

The United States is like one big jail for Black people, because we're locked into a mentality and a mindset that limits our potential. It has us against us.

When you're marginalized, there are no "them people," if we're all on the outskirts of the same margin.

Black, white, Latino, gay, straight – if any one of them came across a bear in the woods, they’d all taste like chicken.

By the time I visited those battlefields, I knew that they had been retrofitted as the staging ground for a great deception, and this was my only security, because they could no longer insult me by lying to me. I knew—and the most important thing I knew was that, somewhere deep with them, they knew too. I like to think that knowing might have kept me from endangering you, that having understood and acknowledged the anger, I could control it. I like to think that it could have allowed me to speak

He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips.

She didn't tell him white folks couldn't love the same as coloreds. She couldn't love the same neither though, cuz more than half of her was white.

There are no superior or inferior races. No one is intrinsically inferior or superior. All have the same value as creatures of god. Those who put others down simply want to exploit them.

To those supremacist racists I ask what color will be their bodies when they turn to dust.

Issues can only be resolved if each person accepts accountability in the problem.

There's "good" in all things. You just have to find it.

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.

You think you're going to impress an American jury with [your] words? In the eyes of the Americans, you're doomed. Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough to convict you.

I remember reading article about the woman in that Oakland neighborhood who lost all her children to violence. I wondered why'd she keep living there after the first one was killed. Didn't she care about the others?Today, I zoomed out and wondered why I'm still in America.

We are captured, brother, surrounded by the majoritarian bandits of America. And this has happened here, in our only home, and the terrible truth is that we cannot will ourselves to an escape on our own. Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world.

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the

White supremacy is a black person telling the people of Baltimore to chill out and try peace, thinking they came up with that thought all on their own.

My heart isn't big enough to care for the oppressors.

Linnie. And this Winnie.” They wore identical smiles, their bright black eyes sparked with curiosity. “Are you the doctor?” “No, I’m just volunteering.” “I knowed that, too.” Winnie gave her an exaggerated shake of the head. “Girls is never the doctor. They’s the nurses.” “Oh no, what about Dr. Clare? Huh? The lady doctor who took care of Grammy in the hospital when she broke her hip bone?” Linnie asked. “Yeah, but she was a white lady. They can be doctors.” Winnie looked at Lucy. “Right? There

But in the earlier hours, or so I have read, they still have got their daylight minds. It takes the midnight mind to do the black deed to the black man.

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with fu

Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue.

Race should be seen in one way, and one way only: on your marks, get set, go!

Race determines variables that yield results undesirable to one sector, while rendering a noticeable favor to others.

I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet.

What does it mean when I say that 'I don't see race?' It means that because I learned to see no difference between 'white' and 'color,' I have white-washed my own sense of self. It means that I know more about what it is to be a white person than what it is to be Asian, and I am a stranger among both.

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.

You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive m

When the Lakota chief Red Cloud finally quit fighting the intruders, he reportedly told a white delegation, "We didn't need all this land, and neither did you.

I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth.

There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally.

To be black in America is a wild and endless assault on the senses. You can spend every day fighting off your spiritual and intellectual extinction.

We want to remember that America is at its best when it’s struggling to live up to its stated ideals.

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.

Just like "All American" means "White," "All Lives" means "White.

The meetings and marches and vigils are cool, but if the enemy isn't present, you're just talking slick to a can of oil.

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.

sick of it whatever it's called sick of the namesI dedicate every pore to what's here

Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation.

When he asked if she was okay, her eyes welled with tears and she said, “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.

You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes, neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We can only regret it, and flee from it, and from henceforth, let peace and righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever.

Acknowledging that all our land was stolen from Native people feels like too great a burden, so we create an alternative reality that allows us to disengage emotionally from the truth.