Race Quotes

I have the soul of a white man, the soul of a black man, the soul of an Asian man; the soul of every man.

This kid was writing saying that they were breaking down some of the racial lines in their towns and communities, because their break dance crews were mixed race, and they didn’t give a fuck. They didn’t care what the Klu Klux Klan said.”- Michael Holman (screenwriter, Basquiat)from nthWORD Issue #8, coming soon...

Michael Holman

It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you can do with natural hair

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Checking a box on a form for race—"Caucasian," "Hispanic," "African-American," "Native American," or "Asian-American"—is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, "American" is not a race, so labels such as "Asian-American" and "African-American" are still exhibits of our confusion of culture and race. For another thing, how far back does one go in history? Native Americans are really Asians, if you go back more than twenty or thirty thousand years to before they crossed the Bering land bridge between Asia and America. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace "Native American" with "African-Asian-Native American." Finally, if the Out of Africa (single racial origin) theory holds true, then all modern humans are from Africa. (Cavalli-Sforza now thinks this may have been as recently as seventy thousand years ago.) Even if that theory gives way to the Candelabra (multiple racial origins) theory, ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to "African-American.

Michael Shermer

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like.

Raquel Cepeda

Run the race of life at your own pace.

Lailah Gifty Akita

The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence. They had not read her blog but they had heard that she was a “leading blogger” about race.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

People run away from the love game because they know they won't win the race.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back... The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time...

Nalo Hopkinson

It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.

Robert W. Service

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

James Baldwin

Most races have a finish line, but some racists are running races where since they never hit the finish line, they never finish lying.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

As best I could I had answered their many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people."Are there any farmers among them?" Mahjoub asked me."Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything—workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us." I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub, though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid he would not understand.

Tayeb Salih

the country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

At the end of the race nobody really cares about how you started, so stay laser focused and finish strong. Get ready to proclaim "I did it!

Farshad Asl

Race, let's remember, is a social invention and a cultural identification, not a biological reality.

Victoria E. Bynum

The new vantage from which Christian theology as a discourse on Christian identity must operate in the modern world, then, is the Christological horizon of Mary-Israel. To be Christian is to enter into this horizon. But where is the horizon concretely displayed, where is it made visible if not in despised dark (and especially dark female) flesh? Is this not the flesh of homo sacer . . .the flesh that is impoverished, "despised and rejected of men," flesh that in shame we "hide our faces from" (cf. Isa. 53:3)? But if this is the case, it follows that the poverty of dark flesh is where one finds the wealthy God. . . In (Christ"s) taking on the form of the slave, the from of despised dark (female) flesh there is the diclsoure (sic) of divinity, a disclosure that undoes the social arrangement of the colonial-racial tyranny (tynannos,), as the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor called it, that is the darker side of modernity

J. Kameron Carter

Whiteness has been, above all, a racial formation that presupposed and reproduced relations of inequality and domination between "whites" and their racial others.

Moon-kie Jung

Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.

Tiger Woods

To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”This invisibility is political.

Michael S. Kimmel

First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man

Alice Walker

Not all ‘whites’ are racists. Not all racists are ‘white.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Linnie. And this Winnie.” They wore identical smiles, their bright black eyes sparked with curiosity. “Are you the doctor?”t“No, I’m just volunteering.”t“I knowed that, too.” Winnie gave her an exaggerated shake of the head. “Girls is never the doctor. They’s the nurses.”t“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.t“Yeah, but she was a white lady. They can be doctors.” Winnie looked at Lucy. “Right? There are white lady doctors. I seen ‘em.”tLucy felt her eyes go wide. Were there children who still believed your gender or color dictated your career? “There are white lady doctors, black lady doctors, white man doctors, black man doctors.”tThey stared at her. tShe thought for a moment. “And there are white man nurses and black man nurses, too.”t“Now you’re just bein’ silly,” Linnie said and let out a laugh.

Mary Jane Hathaway

It is in racists' best interest to maintain white supremacy at all costs. They will defend it with their lives, but ONLY after they've defended it with ours.

Darnell Lamont Walker

Black people are either threats or entertainment.

Darnell Lamont Walker

Black bodies have become ornamental, haven't they?

Darnell Lamont Walker

People often call fighting racism being 'PC' when they don't want to confront their own prejudice

DaShanne Stokes

It's illegal to deny people their records due to race or gender. Adoptees deserve the same rights and protections.

DaShanne Stokes

We must tell the world that even though we elected a bigot, bigotry will not prevail.

DaShanne Stokes

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

Christopher Hitchens

Slow and steady wins the race, only and only if the rabbit, competent, sleeps a while. But, fast and consistency always win it, even if rabbit is awaken.

Syed Ather

A race that rejected the idea of personal sacrifice would surely be erased from time's records before long.

Salman Rushdie

Colonization is the key to our race’s survival. It’s as simple as that. We must colonize or be closed off and contained by other races.

John Scalzi

When we allow violence against some, we enable violence against all.

DaShanne Stokes

The races are like America's children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad's favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught in the middle and always trying to make peace between the other siblings. Asians are the youngest, and get good marks in school, but basically are just trying to keep their heads down and not get involved. And Native Americans are the old uncle who owns a house and everyone else in the family was like, "He's not using that! Let's move in!

Colin Quinn

... as a reminder that a white man could still kill him for nothing.

Yaa Gyasi

[whiteness] has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were something else before they were white—Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish—and if all our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again. Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myth. I cannot call it. As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.The new people are not original in this. Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names. But you and I have never truly had that luxury.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's not 'over-sensitivity' to ask to be treated with the same dignity and respect shown to others.

DaShanne Stokes

The game never changes, you must be in the secret before you are shown to the public.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Political correctness’ is a label the privileged often use to distract from their privilege and hate.

DaShanne Stokes

Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.

Abhijit Naskar

Tolstoy was a Caucasian, Gandhi was an Asian, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a Negro, yet all of their hearts were inspired by the one idea of nonviolent resistance. King received it from Gandhi, Gandhi received it from Tolstoy, and Tolstoy received it from Christ.

Abhijit Naskar

It is character that should be the sole measure of judgement in the society of thinking humanity, and nothing short of that would do.

Abhijit Naskar

If not as a true human, let me tell you as a Biologist, color of the skin does not define an individual’s intelligence – it does not define an individual’s ambitions - it does not define an individual’s dreams – and above all, it does not define an individual’s character.

Abhijit Naskar

In the biological sense, race does not exist.

Abhijit Naskar

Chances are that there are white people who brag about being the first to move out of a suburb that has been intruded by blacks.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I am usually able to tolerate all kinds of victims of indoctrination except those who have been infected with xenophobia, racism, or homophobia.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It's terrifying to think you could become the next statistic.

DaShanne Stokes

Building bridges takes us further than building walls.

DaShanne Stokes

If you can't see past my name, you can't see me.

DaShanne Stokes

Richard Wright and his Negro intellectual colleagues never realized the plain truth that no one in the United States understood the revolutionary potential of the Negro better than the Negro's white radical allies. They understood it instinctively, and revolutionary theory had little to do with it. What Wright could not see was that what the Negro's allies feared most of all was that this sleeping, dream-walking black giant might wake up and direct the revolution all by himself, relegating his white allies to a humiliating second-class status. The negro's allies were not about to tell the Negro anything that might place him on the path to greater power and independence in the revolutionary movement than they themselves had. The rules of the power game meant that unless the American Negro taught himself the profound implications of his own revolutionary significance in America, it would never be taught to him by anybody else. Unless the Negro intellectuals understood that in pursuit of this self-understanding, they would have to make their own rules, by and for themselves, nationalism would forever remain--as it was for Wright-- "a bewildering and vexing question.

Harold Cruse

Persecution complexes are reaffirming to those who benefit from unearned privileges.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

Michael Winship

Plant life is like the canary in the cage. When it starts to die off, we know we have problems. To ignore plant die off would be like the human race committing suicide. Human extinction would surely follow.

Steven Magee

Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm:An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phrase from D.H. Lawrence, and to immerse Jewishness in other and wider struggles. Indeed, the old canard about 'rootless cosmopolitanism' finds a perverse sort of endorsement in Jewish internationalism: the more emphatically somebody stresses that sort of rhetoric about the suffering of others, the more likely I would be to assume that the speaker was a Jew. Does this mean that I think there are Jewish 'characteristics'? Yes, I think it must mean that.

Christopher Hitchens

When God calls you to build 100 castles on earth and you built 98, take the 99th as if it's the begining of your work and work hard to finish the race with all excellence. Go the extra mile!

Israelmore Ayivor

I saw many people who begun their marathon races lately, but they eventually came up as top winners. I believe that your "lateness" does not account for your "lastness". It's not too late for you to make a start... Begin it now! No further delays!

Israelmore Ayivor

Everyone can be a leader irrespective of their age, race, creed, nationality or political affiliation. Once you can figure out your talents and optimize them very well, at the right place and at the right time, you are a leader.

Israelmore Ayivor

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?

Zadie Smith

.....My race is Photofinish.

Farooq A. Shiekh

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