Race In America Quotes

It's no longer time to take sides for or against race, rather sides against those who still do. ~ Brian Spellman

I contend that the cry of 'Black Power' is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years." - Martin Luther King, Jr., 60 Minutes Interview, 1966 ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics. ~ John Ridley

So that's it," he said. "Three hundred dollars. I wish somebody would come into this country with a seed that had to be worked everyday from New Year's right on through Christmas. As soon as you niggers are laid-by, trouble starts. ~ William Faulkner

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

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective."

"Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture."

"Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference."

"Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation. ~ Joy Moore

Of course, as the United States built a safety net that excluded and punished black families, it created a wealth-building apparatus to buoy and enrich white ones. It is not market forces and individual effort alone that determine who succeeds and prospers and who remains impoverished and excluded in the United States, but government policy and deep-seated cultural and societal mores. ~ Annie Lowrey

Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black. ~ Michelle Alexander

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it. ~ Mitch Landrieu

Motherfuckers will read a book that's one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we're taking over. ~ Junot Diaz

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. ~ Tim Wise

I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them. ~ James Weldon Johnson

What I'm asking is will watching The Discovery
Channel with my young black boy instead
of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests
riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him
from harm? ~ Jennifer Givhan

Emer was troubled at how all interpretation now devolved in matters of race or gender or religion. There was no art anymore, even in children's stories. Why wasn't the crow female? Why was The Creator a He? Wasn't Bald Eagle insensitive to men with hair loss? This is how we spend our time now. ~ David Duchovny

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper. ~ Cornel West

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America. ~ Richard Rodriguez

How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow s hall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,
is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

In Coffeeville, Miss., at 6 p.m., there was a golden light and a child swinging in it, swinging from a big tree, over a big lawn, back and forth in front of a big airy house. To be a white middle-class child in a small southern town must be on certain levels the most golden way for a child to live in the United States. ~ Joan Didion

In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors. ~ Fannie Barrier Williams

Yessir, some things is sin 'cause God says so. Some things is sin 'cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid. ~ David Hopper

When you're marginalized, there are no "them people," if we're all on the outskirts of the same margin. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Just as some historians seemed more shocked that the author of the Declaration of Independence had sex with Sally Hemmings than by the fact that he owned her, Clinton received far more censure for his sexual misdeeds than for other moral lapses, such as his politically motivated decision to ignore the finding of a bipartisan panel that issuing needles to drug addicts would save lives and curtail the spread of AIDS without increasing drug addiction. ~ Stephanie Coontz

There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate. ~ Roxane Gay

How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life's race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises. ~ B.C. Forbes

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

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment. ~ Wendell Willkie

I pointed to a Black man standing nearby and said, "If I had said something up there on that stage today that was crazy, that Black man - even though he doesn't know me - would have pulled me aside and asked me what the fuck I was talking about. I told him that white people need to do the same thing. ~ W. Kamau Bell

When white people accuse you of "pulling the race card"―don't even deny it! Tell them; "Yeah, it's the only card I've got while you enjoy a full deck. ~ Sasha Scarr

'Get Out' takes on the task of exploring race in America, something that hasn't really been done within the genre since 'Night of the Living Dead' 47 years ago. ~ Jordan Peele

My interest has always been in the place where sex and race are both obscenely conspicuous and yet consciously suppressed, largely because of the liminal place that the Asian man occupies in the midst of it: an "honorary white" person who will always be denied the full perquisites of whiteness; an entitled man who will never quite be regarded or treated as a man; a nominal minority whose claim to be a "person of color" deserving of the special regard reserved for victims is taken seriously by no one. In an age characterised by the politics of resentment, the Asian man knows something of the resentment of the embattled white man besieged on all sides by grievances and demands for reparation, and something of the resentments of the rising social justice warrior, who feels with every fibre of their being that all that stands in the way of the attainment of their thwarted ambitions is nothing so much as a white man. Tasting of the frustrations of both, he is denied the entitlements of either. ~ Wesley Yang

it trains the kid in question to determine when people in the corner of his eye are talking about him and when they are not, a useful skill in later life when sorting out bona-fide persecution from perceived persecution, the this-is-actually-happening from the mere paranoid manifestation ~ Colson Whitehead

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like. ~ Raquel Cepeda

Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting. ~ Eric Liu

There are more dog owners in America than there are conservatives. ~ Roger Stone

America is not a democracy, it's an absolute monarchy ruled by King Kid. In a nation of immigrants, the child is automatically more of an American than his parents. Americans regard children as what Mr. Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs called betters. Aping their betters, American adults do their best to turn themselves into children. Puerility exercises droit de seigneur everywhere. ~ Florence King

They understood that. They all understood it. This is not the same as comprehension, but it was good enough. When you stop to think, the whole idea of comprehension has a faintly archaic taste, like the sound of forgotten tongues or a look into a Victorian camera obscura. We Americans are much higher on simple understanding. It makes it easier to read the billboards when you're heading into town on the expressway at plus-fifty. To comprehend, the mental jaws have to gape wide enough to make the tendons creak. Understanding, however, can be purchased on every paperback-book rack in America. ~ Stephen King

America, my dear, I do hope you find something in this cage worth fighting for. After all this, I can only imagine what it would be like to see you actually try. ~ Kiera Cass

One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye. ~ George Santayana

Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before. ~ Voltairine De Cleyre

There has been talk of lack of consensus, but we all know that this is the veto of foreign powers, the intolerable situation in our 21st century America. ~ Rafael Correa

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be. ~ John Maynard Keynes

There's something special about racing in real streets. The 'artificial' circuits have a certain sameness to them. But every race conducted on real streets has a character of its own - Barcelona, Monaco, and now Long Beach. ~ Mario Andretti

That's what you do in America: you smile at people you don't know and you smile at people you don't even like and you smile for no reason. ~ NoViolet Bulawayo

produced a race of heroes, so not less surely did the growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for Portugal the lofty place which her heroes had won for her. These are things well worth pondering upon and lessons well worth learning, for the great value of the study of history is in teaching such truths as these - truths which are eternal, while nations wax and wane. The ~ H. Morse Stephens

The examples of the Obama Administration 'stimulating' jobs everywhere on the planet except here in America are endless. ~ Bob Beauprez

There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go. ~ Max Beerbohm

I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America. ~ Tony Campolo

Sociology professor Osagie K. Obasogie recently produced some ingenious research - he interviewed people blind from birth and found the same attitudes about race as in the sighted world. ~ Anonymous

It is shocking, but true, that in today's America, "Justice" is a purchasable commodity. ~ Phillip B. Davidson

You don't lock into a ten-year family budget. You take it a year at a time - maybe even six months at a time. And then if the income really comes in the way you hope it does, then you can make some of those expenditures that you've been waiting to make. We think that same principle should apply to the national family we call America. ~ Dick Gephardt

Safety razors make it hard to grow beards in America: America would be a better place if there were a few bearded, savage, terrible old men. ~ Lewis Mumford

Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come. ~ David Malpass

My generation of director has no illusions that we are going to be fed and cared for by subsidized theater in America. ~ Diane Paulus

Sam was staring at Claire with about the same amazement as his brother had shown. Claire didn't seem to realize it, or else she was too preoccupied to think of it, but she was the second thunderbolt that had fallen on this long-hidebound household in as many days. First one of the hated race of doctors had been shoehorned in on them as the only thing that might get them out of an already nightmarish situation, and now this matter-of-fact slip of a girl had pushed into it of her own accord. They must have felt like the world was coming down around their ears. ~ Elisabeth Grace Foley

Obviously there are a lot of 12-year-olds over in America who are incredible singers. ~ Shayne Ward

Of course, the simple explanation of the fact is that marriage is the most important act of man's life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Our fight against racism should not be a matter of black and white, but good and evil. ~ Kathy McClary

As many of you know, I am not very fond of the human race. However, I will not let them die by the hands of our species nor any other. For thousands of years, we've walked this earth in peace with them, and a war is not in the best interest of either party. It'll only create suffering and tragedy on both sides. We can't allow this to happen. Our only option is to find him and kill him. ~ Christine Gabriel

Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. ~ Haruki Murakami

America is or should be about inclusion. Immigrants like muslims don't and can't fit the white European mold that prevailed in this country 50 years ago. ~ Tom Gjelten

We American's are the example of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We vote Republican; again buying the line that they are deficit hawks and, when in power, they both feast on our blood and treasure and stuff their coffers with sweat literally from our brows.

Again, fed up, we elect Democrats and they repair what the Republicans purposely and yet strategically managed to do. Then, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes with renewed youth, the Republican deficit hawks emerge; spoon feeding us the same old bullshit until we bend to their will. We, in turn, vote them to power and, yet again, the ravenous lot feeds.

This year...this era, however, they're governing like Kamikaze pilots, not giving one bit of damn about either public opinion nor their place in government. I believe that they see the writing on the wall and, with much fervor, are seeking to grab everything they can get their greedy little hands on.

Will we ever get off this hamster wheel, my fellow Americans? ~ A.K. Kuykendall

A guy is on the radio talking about the war.
Speculating.
Speculating.
Speculating.
He says in less than two hours, we shall fight to preserve freedom.
Freedom.
America wants to give another country freedom.
That doesn't sound that bad, or does it. ~ Noah Cicero

Family is not disparate relationships between individuals and machines, in separate rooms of a house. Childhood is not a race to accumulate all of the consumer goods and stresses of adulthood in record time. Simplification signals a change and makes room for transformation. It is a stripping away that invites clarity. ~ Kim John Payne

The good performed by some of United Nations institutions, such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF, has been outweighed by the amount of bad the UN has either abetted or allowed. It has enabled genocide in Rwanda, done little or nothing to stop genocide in the Congo and Sudan, given a respectable forum to tyrannies, convened conferences (the Durban Conferences on racism) that simply became forums for anti-Semitism, and been preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its moral failings were further exemplified by its placing Qaddafi's Libya on its Human Rights Commission, Iran on its Commission on the Status of Women, and North Korea on the Nuclear Disarmament Commission. It is not that the people who run the United Nations are bad people; it is that the United Nations is run by a majority of the world's governments, and they are run by bad people. Without America in the Security Council, the bad would nearly always prevail. ~ Dennis Prager

The people of Ohio are the people of America. The people of America are reflected in Ohio.Our message has to be big, and bold, and positive, and connect, not just with people's heads but also connect with their hearts. If we do it, we will beat Hillary Clinton, and we will run the White House, and we will strengthen and fix America. ~ John Kasich

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed. ~ Agnes Repplier

Since biological change occurs slowly and cultural changes occur in every generation, it is futile to try to explain the fleeting phenomena of culture by a racial constant. We can often explain them-in terms of contact with other peoples, of individual genius, of geography-but not by racial differences. ~ Robert Lowie

America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist. ~ Carlisle Floyd

When I was younger, I looked a lot older than I was. They have these working laws in England where you have to be 16: if you're over 16, you don't have to be restrained by working hours and things like that. In America, it's actually 18. ~ Douglas Booth

We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. ~ Sandra Fluke

We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease. ~ H.L. Mencken