Quotes from Ellis Cose

hey have a good day

If you're black and middle-class…every day you're [going to get] a lot of crap. You're going to get angry.

More recently political scientist James Q. Wilson has made a similar argument. "The best way to reduce racism real or imagined is to reduce the black crime rate," he says.

One woman, a Harvard-educated lawyer, learned to carry a Bally bag when going to certain exclusive shops. Like a sorceress warding off evil with a wand, she would hold the bag in front of her to rebuff racial assumptions, in the hope that the clerk would take it as proof that she could be trusted to enter.

If we tell ourselves that the only problem is hate, we avoid facing the reality that it is mostly nice, nonhating people who perpetuate racial inequality.