Best 4508 quotes in «race quotes» category

How stupid she had been ever to have thought that she could marry and perhaps have children in a land where every dark child was handicapped at the start by the shroud of color! She saw, suddenly, the giving birth to little, helpless, unprotesting Negro children as a sin, an unforgivable outrage. More black folk to suffer indignities. More dark bodies for mobs to lynch.

Humanitarian concerns are always dismissed as impractical, at least initially. Humanitarian concerns, however, aren’t high on the national gay movement’s list of priorities; if they were, we’d hear a lot more from them than we do about the inequities that derive from race, class, and gender.

HUMANITY DOES NOT FAVOUR ANY HUMAN BEING OVER ANOTHER, FOR RACE, RELIGION, SEXUALITY, AGE OR GENDER... JUST LIKE A LOVING MOTHER WHO DOES NOT FAVOUR ONE CHILD OVER ANOTHER.

I always root for the black man, like penance for something I had not part in creating.

How's that training coming along, Griff? Good old Max says you're a natural." Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over.

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.

I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.

Humanity it's strange race, if I can say this. There a lot of secrets and stuff which are still mysteries for this race! I know that most people are like the characters the guy near GreenWind, GreenHollyWood, the people like DeYtH are rare. GreenHollywood blocked me on skype because what??? Can't understand a joke, so he can joke with me but I can't??? WOW! Just Humanity or most people just stop us from doing the stuff which will make us better.

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

I am speaking very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else's whip for nothing. For nothing!

I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them.

I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.

I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.

I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.

I am treacherous with old magic and the noon’s new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white.

I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result merely in his attainment of the present level of American civilisation. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worthwhile if I am now - in order to support the moral contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life - expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse.

I can’t comprehend why any black man with even a lick of sense would have the slightest bit of interest in time travel. Going backward in time? A black man? You have got to be out of your mind.

I can't understand why dark northern soldiers and light ones are seperated into different brigades. The dead are all buried together in hasty mass graves, bones touching.

I believe White Folk persecute Black Folk are publicly, because in their hearts they build alters and sing praises and make sacrifices; they do it all to us. We are admired, and adored, we are coveted for our fleshy part from where our hair ends to where the earth beneath us starts they want everything about this blackness but the burden; that we can keep.

I didn’t want to argue with my hosts. I wanted them to talk. But I felt like reminding Li that perhaps forty million Chinese people had died of starvation a half century earlier because they followed their government’s orders. It was the largest famine in history. A snapshot taken then would have given a very different picture of the supposedly essential character of Chinese people, and it would have entirely missed the point. Governments matter. Markets matter. History matters. International circumstances matter.

I am living in world full of lost hope and discrimination. I am living a life in which social equality does not exist and I am not sure that it ever can, or if once upon a time it ever did.

I didn't want to be the kind of privileged person who tells oppressed people what their version of diversity should look like.

I do not believe we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers this planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos.

I don't give a damn if there's any hope for them or not. But I know that I am not about to be bugged by any more white jokers who still can't figure out whether I'm human or not. If they don't know, baby, sad on them, and I hope they drop dead slowly, in great pain.

I don’t know whether Asimov realized he was saying this as well, but as an old historical materialist, if only as an afterthought, he must have realized that he was saying too: No one here will ever look at you, read a word you write, or consider you in any situation, no matter whether the roof is falling in or the money is pouring in, without saying to him- or herself (whether in an attempt to count it or to discount it), 'Negro...' The racial situation, permeable as it might sometimes seem (and it is, yes, highly permeable), is nevertheless your total surround. Don’t you ever forget it...! And I never have.

I don't expect everyone to feel the same way that I do about land. For so many of us, the scars are still too fresh. Fields of cotton stretching to the horizon - land worked, sweated, and suffered over for the profit of others - probably don't engender warm feelings among most black people. But the land, in spite of its history, still holds hope for making good on the promises we thought it could, especially if we can reconnect to it. The reparations lie not in what someone will give us, but in what we already own. The land can grow crops for us as well as it does for others. It can yield loblolly pine and white oak for us as it has for others. And it can nurture wildlife and the spirit for us, just like it has for others.

I don’t think that the Negro problem in America can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it.

I don’t think anyone deserves to rot in jail the rest of their lives for stealing a pack of cigarettes. The court systems will be no kinder to these people than police have been, and both are avid practitioners of a convenient morality that consigns millions of black Americans to poverty with its selective policies, then persecutes those same black Americans at a disproportionate rate (almost a rate of 1:5) for the same (often nonviolent) crimes, openly regards black Americans with brutality (often killing people in cold blood for no reason other than that they ‘look like’ the grainy photos of 'suspects' I report), and then condemns millions of black Americans, each year, to lives in prison- too often for nothing more than the crime of stealing a pack of cigarettes.

I don’t subscribe to the notion of seeing no color, that we’re all the same and race doesn’t exist. It’s a social and political reality that we live in. The problem when people say we should concentrate on similarities is that they’re ignoring glaring parts of our humanness—our skin, perhaps the color of our hair, the way we speak, or even the shape of our eyes.

I DREAM OF A CHARCOAL CHALKY AFRICA I am as black as charcoal But that is only my skin color I don’t need to see hacked white bodies To know that we are the same on the inside I feel the same anguish and disgust for the innocent Murdered black South Africans during apartheid Murdered white South Africans post-apartheid We 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 blacks I challenge you to search online now Google ‘South African farm murders’ And see if you can look at the gruesome pictures Of innocent children, women and men Do we need more people to be horribly hacked to death? Before we stop the divisive rhetoric of the extreme left? We made a mistake letting apartheid drag on so long But must we repeat that mistake with post-apartheid massacres? Some of these murdered whites fought against apartheid These murdered children didn’t even know about apartheid Don’t take away your eyes now! No, don’t you dare take your eyes off those pictures! The real apartheid criminals are rich and well protected Killing these innocent people is not justice It is inhuman; it is cowardice Don’t look away and don’t hold back the tears It is not only a cry for white victims It is not only a cry for black victims It is a cry for a better South Africa A cry for a richer, charcoal, chalky Africa

I don't want to be included. Instead, I want to question who created the standard in the first place. After a lifetime of embodying difference, I have no desire to be equal. I want to deconstruct the structural power of a system that marked me out as different. I don't wish to be assimilated into the status quo. I want to be liberated from all the negative assumptions that my characteristics bring. The same onus is not on me to change. Instead it's the world around me..

If California is the future of the United States, Los Angeles may offer a lesson. In 1960, it was 72 percent white, but in just ten years that figure dropped to 59 percent, and by 2000 the city was only 33 percent white. During the 1980s, while every other racial group was gaining in numbers, Los Angeles County lost 330,000 whites, and a startling 570,000 during the 1990s. Where did they go? Beginning in the 1980s, California saw a major shift of whites from southern, immigrant-heavy regions to the white north. Many moved to Nevada County, which Mel Mouser, the police chief of the town of Grass Valley, called 'the largest concentration of Caucasians in the state of California.' In the 15 years ending in 1995, the county's population grew by no less than 65 percent and remained 93 percent white. The newcomers were looking for the kind of homogeneity they grew up with but had lost to immigrants. As Chief Mouser explained, the newcomers 'bring with them the common strain of thought: Don't let it be like where I came from.' Although Americans have learned to give non-racial reasons like 'crime' or 'bad schools' for leaving cities, many ex-Los Angelenos were candid about what drove them away. As one 1990s transplant explained, 'People come here for a timeout, to go some place where racial problems don't exist. [...] And when they find it here, they're pathetically grateful. They want to protect it.' Another explained: 'I'd look at my daughter's classroom and see two blondes. [...] It seemed like there was more of everything else but whites.

If feminism can understand the patriarchy, it's important to question why so many feminists struggle to understand whiteness as a political structure in the very same way.

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.

If no one takes a stand, a stand won't be taken.

If origin defines race, then the entire human race is African.

If people believe the government is giving them AIDS and blowing up levees, and that white-owned companies are trying to sterilize them, they would be lacking in normal human emotions if they did not—to put it bluntly—hate the people they believed responsible. Indeed, vigorous expressions of hatred go back to at least the time of W.E.B. Du Bois, who once wrote, “It takes extraordinary training, gift and opportunity to make the average white man anything but an overbearing hog, but the most ordinary Negro is an instinctive gentleman.” On another occasion he expressed himself in verse: 'I hate them, Oh! I hate them well, I hate them, Christ! As I hate hell! If I were God, I’d sound their knell This day!' Such sentiments are still common. Amiri Baraka, originally known as LeRoi Jones, is one of America’s most famous and well-regarded black poets, but his work is brimming with anti-white vitriol. These lines are from “Black Dada Nihilismus:” 'Come up, black dada nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.' Here are more of his lines: 'You cant steal nothin from a white man, he’s already stole it he owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open up if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick up!' In “Leroy” he wrote: “When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.” When he was asked by a white woman what white people could do to help the race problem, he replied, “You can help by dying. You are a cancer. You can help the world’s people with your death.” In July, 2002, Mr. Baraka was appointed poet laureate of New Jersey. The celebrated black author James Baldwin once said: “[T]here is, I should think, no Negro living in America who has not felt, briefly or for long periods, . . . simple, naked and unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter in a day, to violate, out of motives of the cruelest vengeance, their women, to break the bodies of all white people and bring them low.” Toni Morrison is a highly-regarded black author who has won the Nobel Prize. “With very few exceptions,” she has written, “I feel that White people will betray me; that in the final analysis they’ll give me up.” Author Randall Robinson concluded after years of activism that “in the autumn of my life, I am left regarding white people, before knowing them individually, with irreducible mistrust and dull dislike.” He wrote that it gave him pleasure when his dying father slapped a white nurse, telling her not “to put her white hands on him.” Leonard Jeffries is the chairman of the African-American studies department of the City College of New York and is famous for his hatred of whites. Once in answer to the question, “What kind of world do you want to leave to your children?” he replied, “A world in which there aren’t any white people.

If some Mexican-Americans have their way, they will not have to go back to Mexico for burial; Mexico will come to them. What is called the Reconquista movement aims to break the Southwest off from the United States and reattach it to Mexico or establish it as an independent, all-Hispanic nation, thus reversing the territorial consequences of the Mexican-American war. Reconquista is widely promoted on college campuses. Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, thinks “Republica del Norte” would be a good name for a new Hispanic nation, which would contain all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the southern part of Colorado. The Albuquerque-born Prof. Truxillo says the new nation is “an inevitability,” and should be created “by any means necessary.” He doubts violence will be necessary, however, because shifting demographics will make the transition seem natural.

If the Negro or any other type of citizen needs to be kept in his place, what is that place and please define it? If it means that people who have not yet attained a certain degree of culture must put up with the consequences of their own backwardness, we can naturally agree. But it is entirely illogical if it means that they are to be permanently consigned to an inferior status regardless of what degree of culture they may have attained. It is contrary to the entire tradition of American democracy to hold, even implicitly, that persons should be discouraged from emerging from a lower degree of culture or from developing the talents which they have received from the Creator.

If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the "Negro" has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death.

If we conservatives “of color” refuse to promote the welfare state, unfettered abortion, affirmative action, and massive immigration, we are guilty of “selling out.

If we do not know how to meaningfully talk about racism, our actions will move in misleading directions.

If we were the best hope the human race had for its salvation, things were more fucked up than I’d thought.

I don't care about any theory or any philosophy or any of that shit! Blackness is visible! The idea that someone can be black, but not look black is ridiculous! White passing and all that other nonsense about being racially ambiguous but still Black is a god damned lie! The one drop rule is a lie!

If I can't forgive birth mother, how can I be out in the world arguing for love, justice, and community? How can I hold her hostage away from my heart for something she did when she was so young? My instincts are to stay angry, but my heart says that anger is the road to ruin.

If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why—and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions—did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it?

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

If "RACE" becomes the norm, then harmony will not prevail.

If race played a decisive influence on the social status and the level of a person’s income, his color should have influenced his income

If there is such a things as "race", there is only the Human one.