Racial Bias Quotes

Rosa Parks turned to me sweetly and asked, 'Now, Bryan, tell me who you are and what you're doing.' I looked at Ms. Carr to see if I had permission to speak, and she smiled and nodded at me. I then gave Ms. Parks my rap. 'Yes, ma'am. Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we're trying to help people on death row. We're trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice...Ms. Parks leaned back smiling. 'Ooooh, honey, all that's going to make you tired, tired, tired.' We all laughed. I looked down, a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked o me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, 'That's why you've got to be brave, brave, brave.' All three women nodded in silent agreement and for just a little while, they made me feel like a young prince. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment. ~ Bryan Stevenson

We have a history of gender and racial bias on our court that continues to undermine the system. Excluding individuals based on race is antagonistic to the pursuit of justice. ~ Anita Hill

When I stepped into this world, I saw that we were all burdened by a certain kind of indifference to the plight of poor people. We were burdened by an insensitivity to a legacy of racial bias. We were tolerating unfairness and unreliability in a way that burdened me and provoked me. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias rather than exaggerate them. ~ Tim Wise

Viewed as a whole, the relevant research by cognitive and social psychologists to date suggests that racial bias in the drug war was inevitable, once a public consensus was constructed by political and media elites that drug crime is black and brown. ~ Michelle Alexander

I am sometimes asked whether my work reinforces and takes advantage of white guilt. But I don't see my efforts to uncover how race shapes my life as a matter of guilt. I know that because I was socialized as white in a racism-based society, I have a racist worldview, deep racial bias, racist patterns, and investments in the racist system that has elevated me. Still, I don't feel guilty about racism. I didn't choose this socialization, and it could not be avoided. But I am responsible for my role in it. To the degree that I have done my best in each moment to interrupt my participation, I can rest with a clearer conscience. But that clear conscience is not achieved by complacency or a sense that I have arrived. ~ Robin DiAngelo

We're trying to help people on death row. We're trying yo stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We're trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don't get the legal help they need. We're trying to help people who are mentally ill. We're trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We're trying to do something about the poverty and hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-makingroles in the justice system. We're trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We're trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors. ~ Bryan Stevenson

The stance I took was there is no room for racial bias anywhere in sports. I believe that was basically all I said about it. Certainly I was cast as an abolitionist. Death threats came. Hate mail came. ~ Barry Larkin

The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing. The system of mass incarceration is now, for all practical purposes, thoroughly immunized from claims of racial bias. ~ Michelle Alexander

I have no patience for any "fairness"-driven complaints. Life isn't fair, love isn't fair, and as long as we breathe the free air of a capitalistic society, business will never be fair. Thirty years into my career, I have yet to hear a valid "that's not fair" career-related complaint that wasn't related to gender or racial bias. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the people complaining were underachievers that relied on their own lazy standards instead of common sense. They tried to do a good job instead of running a successful business. ~ Ari Gold

You cannot discover lands already inhabited. That process is known as stealing, conquering, or colonizing. The fact that America calls what Columbus did 'discovery' reveals the implicit racial bias of the country - that Native Americans are not fully human. ~ Soong-Chan Rah

Black women, historically, have been doubly victimized by the twin immoralities of Jim Crow and Jane Crow ... Black women, faced with these dual barriers, have often found that sex bias is more formidable than racial bias. ~ Pauli Murray

The detention of Japanese Americans during World War II would qualify as an example of majoritarian tyranny and misuse of executive prerogative, driven by fear and racial bias. ~ Michael Ignatieff

Prospective clients who want to kill their husband, torture a business partner, break the government's legs, hire Roy Cohn," Ken Auletta wrote. "He is a legal executioner - the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilest, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America. He is not a very nice man." Trump served as a supporting witness in the piece. "When people know that Roy is involved, they'd rather not get involved in the lawsuits and everything else that's involved," Trump said. Cohn "was never two-faced. You could count on him to go to bat for you," which was exactly what Trump wanted Cohn to do in the racial-bias case. Cohn ~ Michael Kranish

The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person. This is based on the philosopher John Rawls's concepts of the "veil of ignorance" and the "original position" in which moral actors are ignorant of their position in society when determining rules and laws that affect everyone, because of the self-serving bias in human decision making. ~ Michael Shermer

There had been observed in this country certain streams of influence which are causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct ... a nasty Orientalism which had insidiously affected every channel of expression ... The fact that these influences are all traceable to one racial source [Judaism] is something to be reckoned with ... Our opposition is only in ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people. ~ Henry Ford

The race bullies win by relying on racial guilt. But collective racial guilt can only separate Americans. We are individuals, not homogenous members of racial subsets. Only when we learn to cherish the words of Martin Luther King, judging people as individuals, will we truly have the guts to stand up to the race bullies. After all, to paraphrase a man who once stood for unification rather than division, we're not black America or white America. We're the United States of America. We're brothers and sisters.

If we don't begin to recognize that simple truth -- and recognize the inherent goodness of America, and our ability to look beyond skin color and ethnic heritage -- the race bullies will continue to tear American down for their own political gain, brick by brick. ~ Ben Shapiro

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half. ~ Plato

It can remind you of the bias of provincial New England, whose higher culture has been so exclusively one of books that it has grown incapable even of appraising the worth of other modes of expression ~ F.O. Matthiessen

Exposing their own humility and vulnerability is one of the most difficult challenges for white antiracist, even after achieving an autonomous white racial identity. ~ Eileen O'Brien

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want. ~ Noreena Hertz

The Court had repeatedly made clear, though, that the Constitution does not require that racial minorities and women actually serve on juries - it only forbids excluding jurors on the basis of race or gender. For many African Americans, the use of wholly discretionary peremptory strikes to select a jury of twelve remained a serious barrier to serving on a jury. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along. ~ Langston Hughes

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences - radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings. ~ Sonya Renee Taylor

Racial stereotyping. For Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders, the sin of white racism was stereotyping all black people as inferior. It was a prejudice to be sure, but it was predicated on the assumption that all blacks were the same. King objected to stereotyping because he wanted blacks to be treated as individuals and not reduced exclusively to their racial identity (hence the meaning of his famous statement about the content of one's character taking precedence over the color of one's skin).

The postmodern left turns the civil rights model on its head. It embraces racial stereotyping -- racial identity by any other name -- and reverses it, transforming it into something positive, provided the pecking order of power is kept in place. In the new moral scheme of racial identities, black inferiority is replaced by white culpability, rendering the entire white race, with few exceptions, collectively guilty of racial oppression. The switch is justified through the logic of racial justice, but that does not change the fact that people are being defined by their racial characteristic. Racism is viewed as structural, so it is permissible to use overtly positive discrimination (i.e., affirmative action) to reorder society.

This end-justifies-the-means mentality of course predates the postmodern left. It can be found in the doctrine of affirmative action. But the racial theorists of identity politics have taken "positive" discrimination to a ~ Kim R. Holmes

The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment. If you wait until you believe you are safe, sure to be without occasional foolish feelings, you've most likely waited too long. ~ Tom Peters

With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

Some people would deem their parents or children ugly if they were not theirs. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For a long time, the Court has moved toward outlawing all forms of racial preference, including affirmative action, and Obama seems accepting, even supportive, of the change. ~ Jeffrey Toobin

Immigration today is a racial issue. It is one which sees masses of non-whites from around the globe immigrating to white countries. ~ Arthur Kemp

After centuries of marginalization and neglect, we need to cast our own movements, projects, and ideas as a battle for relevancy in the face of historical manipulation, exploitation, and oppression. We need to fight, tooth and nail, for equity in all areas of social life. One point to make clear, ethnic and racial minorities are not looking for scraps or a handout from the old paternalistic system but an equitable, stable, and leveled playing field. ~ Martin Guevara Urbina

The racial laws which excluded the Jews from the German community seemed to a foreign observer to be a shocking throwback to primitive times, but since the Nazi racial theories exalted the Germans as the salt of the earth and the master race they were far from being unpopular. A ~ William L. Shirer

That's stupid, that's bias.. they lied, they don't wanna gift credit for anything ~ Michael J. Jackson

So the reason for our cleanliness becomes apparent; cleanliness is a form of apprehension; our faulty racial memory is fathered by fear. Destiny and history are untidy; we fear memory of that disorder. ~ Djuna Barnes

I find that students are very strong on my issues, stronger than anyone: anti-death penalty, anti-racial profiling, campaign finance reform, questioning the anti-terrorism bill. ~ Russ Feingold

One editor during the Civil War got a grievous message to meet his brothers corpse, only to find out that the telegraph operator had garbled the message to meet his living brother's CORPS. ~ Harold Holzer

I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity. ~ Gregory Peck

Perhaps we could revisit the issue of World Cup Host selection for 2018/2022 as some countries feel, and we did say, they are more suitable. Russia was the only high risk location for 2018 and racial chanting is rife there but a Mr. R. Abramovich paid a significant fee to fund the voting proceedings and, not to be discriminatory, we would have to see the same thing from any England/Spain representatives wishing to have another vote. ~ Sepp Blatter

Some series teach us that ethnic features must be "fixed," by drastic means if necessary. Plastic surgeons with questionable ethics give insecure women of all ethnicities boob jobs, liposuction, and face-lifts on shows such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and Dr. 90210, ignoring medical risks and reinforcing problematic ideas about women's worth. Yet they don't make white surgical candidates feel like their cultural identity should also be on the chopping blocking - or that they'd be so much more attractive and fulfilled if only they didn't look so... Caucasian.

In contrast, TV docs' scalpels reduce or remove racial markers on patients of colour. Black women's noses and lips are made smaller. In an increasingly common procedure targeting Asian women, creases are added to Asian women's eyelids. ~ Jennifer L. Pozner

The more depressed and maladjusted you are, the more likely it is that you are seeing things right, with minimal bias ~ John Derbyshire

Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. ~ Margaret Sanger

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black. ~ Ice-T

Some authors have argued that a direct historical line can be drawn to Nazism from the French Revolution of 1789, the Jacobin 'Reign of Terror' in 1793-4, and the implicit idea of a popular dictatorship in Rousseau's theory of the 'General Will,' decided initially by the people but brooking no opposition once resolved upon. The French Revolution was indeed remarkable for its rehersal of many of the major ideologies that bestrode the historical stage of Europe in the following two centuries, from communism and anarchism to liberalism and conservatism. But National Socialism was not among them. The Nazis, indeed thought of themselves as undoing all the work of the French Revolution and rolling back the clock, in a political sense at least, much further to the early Middle Ages. Their concept of the people was racial rather than civic. All the ideologies to which the French Revolution had given birth were to be destroyed. The Nazi Revolution was to be the world-historical negation of its French predecessor, not its historical fufillment. ~ Richard J. Evans

We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on the racial struggle without mercy. ~ Heinrich Himmler

When you arrive really inside the discussion of race, practically they institute a Mexican-ness, a Latin-ness, a racial community that just isn't true. So, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans. ~ Bocafloja

Racial relations in this country are plummeting. Racial strife is rising. All the while, Obama is out there talking about unity and bringing us together. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Someone told me recently that a commentator or some sort had said, "The United States is in spiritual free-fall." When people make such remarks, such appalling judgements, they never include themselves, their friends, those with whom they agree. They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an "us" and a "them." Those on the other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy of respect or hearing, and are in fact to be regarded as a huge problem to the "us" who presume to judge "them." This tedious pattern has repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and the beginning of tribalism. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Too often, it seems, conservatives have scorned experts as incompetent, biased, or otherwise worth ignoring because they came up with answers that didn't fit their politically desired answer. Often, they proclaim experts have a liberal bias. Of course, plenty of Democrats have voted for conservative ideas, but that is beside the point. ~ Kurt Eichenwald

It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic. ~ Joseph Heller

White America's trust in the system and related belief in its own merit pose a frequent roadblock in racial reconciliation. Many Whites in these settings are fine with discussing White supremacy as an abstract principle, or a historical artifact, or even as an ongoing reality in the lives of people of color. But they are highly resistant to examining their own privilege or to the suggestion that any element of their success may be the product of racial privilege. ~ Chanequa Walker-Barnes

The relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others in order to end the racial nightmare and acheive our country. ~ James Baldwin

The forces of the sea give rise to imagination, which reflects them according to the nature and disposition of the perceiver. The sea itself is undifferentiated and without bias. ~ F.T. McKinstry

The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person ... ~ Barack Obama

Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over ... [they] now mean the establishment point of view ... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity. ~ John Pilger

He who will lose a present good for one in expectation hath some wit, but a small store of wisdom. ~ Bias Of Priene

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It's up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it's on the basis of race. Depending on a culture's fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders - even in their own homes.
Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we're most afraid we will find in ourselves - and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins.
And we're often not honest about what's happening. If we're on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, "I'm not in that situation because I'm different. But that's just pride talking. We could easily be that pers ~ Melinda Gates