Ingrained Racism Quotes

I noticed that among this class of colored men the word "nigger" was freely used in about the same sense as the word "fellow," and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men. ~ James Weldon Johnson

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. ~ Barack Obama

People who insist on dividing the world into 'Us' and 'Them' never contemplate that they may be someone else's 'Them'. ~ Ray A. Davis

We have learned to see racism in the spittle-laced epithets of the angry bigot. We must also learn to see racism in the coded racial entreaties promoted by calculating demagogues. ~ Ian F. Haney-Lopez

The only way not to worry about the race problem is to be doing something about it yourself. When you are, natural human vanity makes you feel that now the thing is in good hands. ~ Margaret Halsey

Let's make progress justice a process, not an afterthought ~ Simon S. Tam

Has racial justice improved? Have we moved on from Reconstruction and Jim Crow? Been lifted by Martin and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It seems that whenever we take two steps forward, we take a step back . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

It's the last best trick of a losing Democrat, is to accuse the Republicans of racism. ~ Erick Erickson

Dominicans are in fact, Haitians by default.
Since the natives named the whole island named Haïti, stop being a dolt. ~ Ricardo Derose

The depreciation of historical fact is deeply, and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession, the same profession that places the highest of all values upon factual details of other sorts. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved - the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn't want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn't going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn't going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as "takers," incapable of making it on their own. The "last person who ever thought that Barack Obama's election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some "end of race" in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person's concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line "And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States." But he couldn't offer up absolution for America's racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years. ~ Ben Rhodes

Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Our current politics tell you that should you fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it must somehow be your fault. Trayvon Martin's hoodie got him killed. Jordan Davis's loud music did the same. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how "presidential" the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the "presidential" silverback's name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth. ~ Paul Beatty

An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

Racism is taught in our society ... it is not automatic.
It is learned behavior toward persons with
dissimilar physical characteristics. ~ Alex Haley

The ONLY thing you should be saying to be is that you recognize that you were born into a racist, white supremacist system that imbued you with racist ideals from birth. That you recognize your racism, privilege, and inherent bias and are actively working to unlearn it. If you are not saying that then you are not saying anything, and you don't have permission to speak to me. ~ Seren Sensei

The rich ruling class has used tribalism, a primitive caveman instinct, to their advantage since the beginning of time. They use it to divide and conquer us. They drive wedges between us peasants and make us fight each other, so we won't rise up against our rulers and fight them.

You can observe the same old trick everywhere in America today: Red states and blue states are fighting. Christians and Muslims are fighting. Men and women are fighting. Baby Boomers and Millennials are fighting. Black people and white people are fighting.

That doesn't just happen all by itself. There are always voices instigating these fights. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

They made you an Amendment and convinced you it meant 'American. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?" I mean, they're always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let's say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It's obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I'd help the man who didn't have the gun, if the man who had the gun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn't like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn't have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say "Let me help you," and what they mean is "help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you."

If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he's the one who picked up the gun. ~ Stokely Carmichael

The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity. ~ Joshua Waitzkin

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love. ~ Desmond Tutu

It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education. ~ Richard Mitchell

There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there. ~ Julianne Malveaux

Yes, he was a good man, but he was also a black man. And when you're black, being good isn't always enough."
"No, sweetheart, it isn't. A black man walks a different line, a tightrope. Sometimes that line is hard to see. That seems to be what happened here. ~ Mark M. Bello

Privilege is when you contribute to the oppression of others and then claim that you are the one being discriminated against. ~ DaShanne Stokes

The fundamental reason for the superiority of totalitarian propaganda over the propaganda of other parties and movements is that its content, for the members of the movement at any rate, is no longer an objective issue about which people may have opinions, but has become as real and untouchable an element in their lives as the rules of arithmetic. The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime. In Nazi Germany, questioning the validity of racism and antisemitism when nothing mattered but race origin, when a career depended upon an "Aryan" physiognomy (Himmler used to select the applicants for the SS from photographs) and the amount of food upon the number of one's Jewish grandparents, was like questioning the existence of the world. ~ Hannah Arendt

In this nation people assume they can write your story from beginning to end, and wait for you to fall into place on the stage that has been set, it is why every conversation scans like a hostage negotiation, with your humanity being the item that's up for deliberation. ~ Rafeif Ismail

Wealthy queers support initiatives that lock up and murder poor queers, trans* people, and sex workers. Women in positions of power continue to defend and sometimes initiate the vicious assault on abortion and reproductive rights, and then off-load reproductive labor onto the shoulders of care workers, who are predominantly women of color whose employment is often directly tied to their citizenship status. The politics of "leaning in" for a small layer of wealthy women has dovetailed with budget cuts and health care rollbacks that have left poor women at the mercy of misogynist, increasingly lethal anti-reproductive-rights legislation, and left poor, queer and trans* people without access to necessary medical resources like hormones or AIDS medication.

Original pamphlet: Who is Oakland. April 2012.
Quoted in: Dangerous Allies. Taking Sides. ~ Tipu's Tiger

Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism? ~ Assata Shakur

Skin heads are doing an awful job of promoting racism. You guys need to loosen up, and for god's sake would it kill you to smile. ~ Dov Davidoff

Every now and then I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me, and I experience racism. Things like not being buzzed into a store or sitting in first class on a plane and having someone ask to see my ticket four times. ~ Chris Rock

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason. ~ Toni Morrison

There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together ... But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism, and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald's body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name. ~ Ravi Howard

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

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both. ~ Constance Baker Motley

To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death
these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow. ~ C.S. Lewis

During these times of stress and strain where society is flooded with negativity and loss of hope for humanity, I have a friendly reminder. I am a firm believer in the particularly special sect in society that happens to be significantly socially educated in modern generations. I want to kindly remind you of the people that grasp hope and humanity firmly in one hand and their neighbor with the other. There is a significant amount of loving and educated people that will be the reason we look back at negative events that occur today in awe. And with so much bigotry and lack of humanity today, we must remember that with no struggle there is no progress. The struggles we experience today are the motives for the progress and accomplishments of tomorrow, remember that. When you encounter social pessimism, remember to set the example for newer generations to come and leave the past to dwell where it belongs. ~ Ghaleya Aldhafiri

To be white in the Caribbean is to have money, power, and the freedom to do anything or nothing - it is, in many cases, to occupy the top rung of society. ~ Sharon Hurley Hall

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia. ~ Anna Quindlen