Race Relations Quotes

• Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.

  James W. Loewen

  Race, Land, Two

  James W. Loewen (2013). “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, p.72, The New Press

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• I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Girl, Dream, Boys

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• Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

  Chris Rock

  Crazy, Race, White

  Interview with Frank Rich, www.vulture.com. November 30, 2014.

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• 

  The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

  Chris Rock

  Children, White, America

  "Chris Rock's Epic Truth Bomb About How It's White People That Have Progressed, Not Black People". Interview with Angie Aker, www.upworthy.com. December 2, 2014.

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• Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don't think it's given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely. I'm going to make a very bold statement: Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations.

  Jay-Z

  Music, Thinking, Race

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• So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

  Chris Rock

  Beautiful, Children, Smart

  Interview with Frank Rich, www.vulture.com. November 30, 2014.

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• So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress.

  Chris Rock

  White, Black, Progress

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• A white person listens to my act and he laughs and he thinks, 'Yeah, that's the way I see it too.' Okay. He's white. I'm Negro. And we both see things the same way. That must mean that we are alike..... So I figure I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy.

  Bill Cosby

  Mean, Thinking, White

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• It's a weird scene. You win a few baseball games and all of a sudden you're surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras asking you about Vietnam and race relations.

  Vida Blue

  Baseball, Winning, Men

  Vida Blue, Bill Libby (1972). “Vida: His Own Story”, Prentice Hall

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• When Thurgood Marshall became a lawyer, race relations in the United States were particularly bad.

  Constance Baker Motley

  Race, Usa, United States

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• One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

  Margaret Halsey

  Race, Racism, People

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

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• The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

  Clint Eastwood

  Country, Race, Swings

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• The North has no interest in the particular Negro, but talks of justice for the whole. The South has not interest, and pretends none, in the mass of Negroes but is very much concerned about the individual.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Justice, African American, Individual

  Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (1979). “I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader”, p.157, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country.

  Sarah-Patton Boyle

  Country, Loneliness, Men

  Sarah Patton Boyle (2016). “The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition”, p.115, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Black, Segregation

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.24, Modern Library

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• In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

  Constance Baker Motley

  School, Race, Law

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• In many people's many people's minds this is the sole reason Barack Obama was elected. He was elected to fix race relations.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Race, People, Mind

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• I believe in terms of the work that I do, in establishing dialogue about race relations in Latin America, steps on one of the most relevant themes today.

  Bocafloja

  Latin, Believe, Race

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I am absolutely convinced that race relations on the whole are actually better now than they were 20 years [ago].

  Barack Obama

  Race, Years, Relation

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Race, Liberty

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• Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Race, Three

  "Is Reality Optional?". Book by Thomas Sowell, November 22, 1993.

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• Race relations can be an appropriate issue... but only if you want to craft solutions, and not catalogue complaints. If we use the issue appropriately, we can transform it from the cancer of our society into the cure.

  David Dinkins

  Cancer, Race, Issues

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• Once in a while, God sends a good white person my way, even to this day. I think it's God's way of keeping me from becoming too mean. And when he sends a nice one to me, then I have to eat crow. And honey, crow is a tough old bird to eat, let me tell you.

  Annie Elizabeth Delany

  Nice, Mean, Thinking

  Sarah Louise Delany, Annie Elizabeth Delany, Amy Hill Hearth (1993). “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years”, p.77, Kodansha America

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• a white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when it comes to race relations, not telling the whole truth about the fog one inhabits slows down the work of groping forward.

  Naomi Wolf

  Country, Thinking, Race

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• The air has finally gotten to the place that we can breathe it together.

  Septima Poinsette Clark

  Freedom, Air, Together

  Septima Poinsette Clark (1990). “Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement”

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