Race Relations Quotes - Page 2

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

DaShanne Stokes

Racism hurts everyone, including racists themselves.

DaShanne Stokes

Urging an organization to be inclusive is not an attack. It's progress.

DaShanne Stokes

Never be content to sit back and watch as others' rights are trampled upon. Your rights could be next.

DaShanne Stokes

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

DaShanne Stokes

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

DaShanne Stokes

The minute we look away, the minute we stop fighting back, that's the minute bigotry wins.

DaShanne Stokes

Bigotry is based on deception, of oneself and of others.

DaShanne Stokes

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

Carlos Wallace

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

Carlos Wallace

It speaks volumes when people who are discriminated against go on to discriminate against others.

DaShanne Stokes

Standing against discrimination for some while supporting discrimination against others hurts us all.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

Bangambiki Habyarimana

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 the needed words to the woman and then walk away. I like to think this, but I can’t promise it. The struggle is really all I have for you because it is the only portion of this world under your control.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Shannon Celebi

Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is “normal” if he is like everybody else and “abnormal” if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous.

Hannah Arendt

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

Auliq-Ice

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.

Toni Morrison

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.

John Marshall Harlan

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 other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.

John Marshall Harlan

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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.

P.B.S. Pinchback

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.

Darnell Lamont Walker

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

Darnell Lamont Walker

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.

Colson Whitehead

An institution rooted in slavery cannot be the voice of our people.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

Carvell Wallace

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

Lonnie Bunch

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.

Scott Zesch

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 minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects—are the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

There is nothing 'honorable' or 'reasonable' in giving a pass to those who want to discriminate.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

James Baldwin

If origin defines race, then we are all Africans – we are all black.

Abhijit Naskar

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.

Aberjhani

People often call fighting discrimination being 'PC' because they don't want their own unearned privileges challenged.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

Paul Beatty

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

Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.

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

Racism is dead only to those who've closed their eyes and ears to the whole world around them.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

Darnell Lamont Walker

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

Thelonious Monk

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.

Darnell Lamont Walker

If you love your country, you must be willing to defend it from fraud, bigotry, and recklessness--even from a president.

DaShanne Stokes

Building bridges takes us further than building walls.

DaShanne Stokes

It's a scary world we live in when a person of color endorses a racist for president.

DaShanne Stokes

Discrimination is discrimination, even when people claim it's 'tradition.

DaShanne Stokes

Calling for an end to hate shouldn't be treated as a punishable offense.

DaShanne Stokes

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 patent defence at hand,—the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture? The price of culture is a Lie.

W.E.B. Du Bois

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

DaShanne Stokes

If you'd combat bigotry, use honest language and call things out for what they really are.

DaShanne Stokes

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.

George W. Bush

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

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

Habeeb Akande

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Race Relations Quotes - Page 2

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