Racism Quotes - Page 9

• 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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• Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.

  Mary Frances Berry

  Men, Rights, White Man

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• Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.

  Mary McCarthy

  Race, Evil, Disease

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The humanist in the bathtub”

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• No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.

  Faith Ringgold

  Art, Believe, Sacrifice

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• I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

  Langston Hughes

  Mean, Political, Democracy

  "The Black Man Speaks" l. 1 (1943)

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• Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.

  Alveda King

  Thinking, Errors, Roots

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• Sometimes change comes not in the first round, but at the second, third or fourth. Change starts with one person questioning, challenging, speaking up and doing something to make a difference. We can each make a difference...because each of us is already part of the community where racism exists & thrives.

  Paul Kivel

  Differences, Speaking Up, Community

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• The blind spot for the in the Southern Progressive Movement - as for that matter in the national [progressive] movement - was the Negro, for the whole movement in the South coincided paradoxically with the crest of the wave of racism. Still more important to the association of the two movements was the fact that their leaders were often identical. In fact, the typical Progressive reformer rode to power in the South on a disenfranchising or white-supremacy movement.

  C. Vann Woodward

  Philosophy, Two, Blind Spots

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• Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Ignorance, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

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• Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things - he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

  Jimmy Carter

  Jesus, Teaching, Gay

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• Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

  Coretta Scott King

  People, Humanity, Racist

  Chicago Defender newspaper, April 01, 1998.

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• Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

  Desmond Tutu

  Xenophobia, Slavery, Discrimination

  Desmond Tutu, John Allen (2011). “God Is Not A Christian”, p.51, Random House

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• That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserved of their scorn.

  Barack Obama

  Laughter, Mean, White

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.80, Canongate Books

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• I am a Muslim and . . . my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings, but especially the Afro-American human being, because my religion is a natural religion, and the first law of nature is self-preservation.

  Malcolm X

  Men, Rights, Self

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• Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Honesty, Ignorance, Knowledge

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2007). “The Negro”, p.130, Cosimo, Inc.

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• In Baltimore they can't do police work to save their lives. Now because of Freddie Gray they're not even getting out of the car and policing corners - they're on a job slowdown, basically. Right now if the police stopped being brutal, if we got police shooting under control, and the use of excessive force, if we have a meaningful societal response to all that stuff, and the racism that underlies it, the question still remains: what are they policing, and why?

  David Simon

  Meaningful, Car, Police

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• It always seemed to me that white people were judged as individuals. But if a Negro did something stupid or wrong, it was held against all of us.

  Annie Elizabeth Delany

  Stupid, White, People

  Sarah Louise Delany, Annie Elizabeth Delany, Amy Hill Hearth (1993). “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years”, p.129, Kodansha America

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• I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Country, Disappointment, Moving

  "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam". Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, April 30, 1967.

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• If the first words out of your mouth are to cry 'political correctness!', ... chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.

  N.K. Jemisin

  Political, Mouths, Firsts

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• Young people want to learn, they are thirsty for knowledge, they want to understand and remember. The main thing is to teach them where not to go. Oppression, not to go; dictatorship, not to go; racism and prejudice, absolutely not to go. This is a moral plan [for society].

  Elie Wiesel

  People, Want, Prejudice

  Source: alainelkanninterviews.com

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• Auschwitz cries out with the pain of immense suffering and pleads for a future of respect, peace and encounter among peoples.

  Pope Francis

  Respect, Peace, Pain

  Pope Francis‏ @Pontifex, twitter.com. January 27, 2015.

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• Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.

  Margaret Walker

  Atmosphere, Black, Individual

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• The caste system, in all its various forms, is always based on identifiable physical characteristics - sex, color, age.

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  Sex, Color, Age

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• And if we are to open employment opportunities in this country for members of all races and creeds, then the Federal Government must set an example. The President himself must set the key example. I am not going to promise a Cabinet post or any other post to any race or ethnic group. That is racism in reverse at its worst. So I do not promise to consider race or religion in my appointments if I am successful. I promise only that I will not consider them.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Successful, Opportunity

  Campaign speech, Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, October 17, 1960.

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• Southerners are the more lonely and spiritually estranged, I think, because we have lived so long in an artificial social system that we insisted was natural and right and just - when all along we knew it wasn't.

  Carson McCullers

  Lonely, Thinking, Long

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