Overt Racism Quotes

There are white people who know how to act politely to blacks, but deep down you know they're uncomfortable. They're worse, more dangerous than those who speak their minds, because they don't know what they're capable of. ~ Cristina Garcia

For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President. ~ Howard Zinn

I suspect unconscious bias has been far more of a factor for President Obama than overt racism and will also be a challenge for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president again. ~ Nicholas Kristof

How can you work in film and still see the overt racism that exists in film and not just be furious all the time? ~ Joaquin Phoenix

Why can't you just get over it? It's all in the past.'

These two statements often run together. Apparently, history is not
there to be learned from, rather it's a large boulder to be gotten over.

It's fascinating, because in the hundreds of workshops I've taught on
Shakespeare no one has ever told me to get over his writing because
it's, you know, from the, erm, past. I'm still waiting for people to get
over Plato, or Da Vinci or Bertrand Russell, or indeed the entirety of
recorded history, but it seems they just won't. It is especially odd in a
nation where much of the population is apparently proud of Britain's
empire that critics of one of its most obvious legacies should be asked
to get over it, the very same thing from the past that they are proud of.
But anyway, let's imagine for a second that humanity did indeed 'get
over' - which in this case means forget - the past. Well, we'd have to
learn to walk and talk and cook and hunt and plant crops all over again,



we'd have to undo all of human invention and start from . . . when?
What period exactly is it we are allowed to start our memory from?
Those that tell us to get over the past never seem to specify, but I'm
eager to learn. In reality, of course, they just don't want to have any
conversations that they find uncomfortable. ~ Akala

And Charles turned around and called back without thinking, 'You know, you're awfully lucky you boys are white.'
He didn't know why he said it. It had broken out of him. He'd wanted to speak with love: that was all that he'd asked for that day, but now there was a shocked silence. Oh shit, Charles thought. I'm fired for sure. ~ Kaitlyn Greenidge

Lafayette had a powerful insight, detecting in slaveholders a combination of "prejudices, Habits, and Calculations."26 This combination acted as their engine, in place of a conscience. Racism ratified their power, as did the dispensations of Providence. They were precursors of the Ayn Rand protagonist of the twentieth century. ~ Henry Wiencek

The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Would Jesus build a wall? Would Mother Teresa? No, of course not. They would welcome the refugees and give them free universal healthcare. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

[The] association of wealth with whites and poverty with blacks is not accidental. It is the nature of the imperialist relationship that enriches the metropolis at the expense of the colony i.e. it makes the whites richer and the blacks poorer. ~ Walter Rodney

His day is done.

Is done.

The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.

Nelson Mandela's day is done.

The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber.

Our skies were leadened.

His day is done.

We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveller returns.

Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer.

We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world.

We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath.

Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant.

Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons.

Would the man survive? Could the man survive?

His answer strengthened men and women around the world.

In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago's Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City's Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison's doors.

His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty.

He had not been crippled by brutes, nor ~ Maya Angelou

But all our phrasing - race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy - serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think that if there can be considered racism it's to do with the lack of opportunities for writers and producers and the people behind the camera. ~ Denzel Washington

Racism has always been able to come up with a scientific veneer. ~ Andrew Hacker

It's also about Oscar.
Aiyana.
Trayvon.
Rekia.
Michael.
Eric.
Tamir.
John.
Ezell.
Sandra.
Freddie.
Alton.
Philando.
It's even about that little boy in 1955 who nobody recognized at first - Emmett. ~ Angie Thomas

Survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. ~ Audre Lorde

The idea of "common oppression" was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women's varied and complex social reality. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices. Sustained woman bonding can occur only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them. ~ Bell Hooks

Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro. ~ Thomas Pearce Bailey

Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism. ~ Florynce Kennedy

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

Think of it in terms of men's and women's cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/ countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture.

-- Judit Moschkovich - "--But I Know You, American Woman ~ Cherrie L Moraga

A delegate shout out from the floor: "Peonage, Anti-Lynch Bill, poll tax, these are our issues. They are the most controversial issues in American life, and some of us will have to die for them! Yes, we want to join with the CIO! We cannot stop for controversy!" And there in the faces of my people I saw strength. There with the whites in the audience I saw the positive forces of civilization and the best guarantee of America's future. ~ Ralph Ellison

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken. ~ Dick Gregory

The trick to realize that the boys who talk so much about being rejected that it seems like the're proud of it aren't necessarily sweeter or more sensitive than the Bababooey-spouting frat bullies who line up at clubs like SkyBar to run game on girls they want to date rape. There are plenty of nerds who fear women and aren't sensitive, despite their marketing; they just dislike women in a new, exciting way. Timid racists aren't sensitive because they lock their car doors when they see a black person on the street. They're just too scared to get out of the car and shout the "N" word.

Fear can be the result of admiration, or it can be a symptom of contempt. When I see squeamish guys passing over qualified women when they're hiring for a job, or becoming tongue tied when a girl crashes their all-boy conversation at a party, I don't give them credit for being awestruck. They're reacting to the intimidating female as an intruder, an alien, and somebody they can't relate to. It's not a compliment to be made invisible. ~ Julie Klausner

Almost all of my early art dealt with the fallout from middle-class taboos, the messy, the ambivalent emotions couples felt, the inherent racism, the sexual tensions and the unhappiness roiling below the surface of our prim suburban lives. Meanwhile I was a suburban bad boy - cynical, sarcastic, contemptuous of all authority. ~ Eric Fischl

I want to be on a show that's not sensitive to racial jokes; I want to be on one where they call me everything and I call them right back. There's blatant racism going both ways. That's what we need. ~ Wale

No truth, no equality. No equality, no justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no love. No love, only darkness. ~ Suzy Kassem

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant ... I had never been so described as Florida described me. ~ Sidney Poitier

The Internet has provided small communities for racism online, and people feel free to do it. Ultimately, there should be some consequence - if you promote your racism online then there should be a consequence. ~ Issa Rae

True confession: The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language. ~ Jodi Picoult

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency - issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights - the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious. ~ Gregory S. Paul

The black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so. ~ John H. McWhorter

The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races. ~ Ruth Benedict

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I had found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. . . . I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books. ~ Carl Sagan

Mr. Bialy said you were a good guy."
"You don't want a good guy representing you in situations like this one. You want a barracuda when it comes to dealing with bad cops, negligent police departments, and attorneys who represent them. They are afraid of me; they think I'm a bad guy. Please don't give away my secret." Sarah chuckles through her tears. He has an easy way about him. I hope he's an ass-kicker in court.
"Your secret is safe with me, Zack. ~ Mark M. Bello

If someone's a racist, punch them in the mouth so they will be sadder, and therefore less likely to stereotype. (Even if Fargas's theory is flawed, on the upside, at least you've punched a racist in the mouth.) ~ Jeff Wilser

Our hearts are not black or white. Nor are they fat or thin. Our hearts are all the same. Our hearts only beat for love! ~ Avijeet Das

I care because as long as slavery is sanctioned in this world, either directly or tacitly, we are a doomed species. There is no hope for progress, no hope for a world of peace and prosperity, if some men are allowed dominion over others for as arbitrary a reason as skin color. ~ Alyssa Cole

Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying. ~ Anna Quindlen

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

Okay. I'm not a white male. At least, not predominantly so. And as I mentioned before, I'm in an environment right now where race is really important. See, Chinese men are not that physically intimidating. We're not that tall. We're not that built. We have exactly one thing going for us in a fight - that our opponent recognizes that there's a possibility, no matter how remote, that we might know kung-fu. ~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism. ~ Rand Paul

Corporations are great and appalling things. They take you and shape you in nearly nothing flat, twist and swivel you. And they do it without overt persuasion, they do it with smiles and nods, a collective inflection of the voice. You stand at the head of a corridor and by the time you walk to the far end you have adopted the comprehensive philosophy of the firm, the Weltanschauung. I use this grave and layered word because somewhere in its depths there is a whisper of mystical contemplation that seems totally appropriate to the subject of waste. ~ Don DeLillo

The only thing white about me is the skin I'm wearing. ~ Randolph Randy Camp

Those of us who oppose hateful bigotry must not be silent when it rears its ugly head. When the tolerant tolerate the intolerant they risk losing the very freedoms they are trying to protect. Bigotry should never be allowed to become acceptable and commonplace in a healthy society. ~ Laurence Overmire

Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory. ~ Richard P. Feynman

Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior? ~ Buchi Emecheta