Quotes About Diversity

The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

You can't see yourself all over. But I can. Part of you is honey, part of you is copper, some of you is gold--

A man is not a man until he's able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from that of others.

The American Negro is a unique creation; he has no counterpart anywhere, and no predecessors.

It is quite impossible to write a worth-while novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse, unhappily, to function in so neat and one-dimensional a fashion.

What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them.

It is easy for an African to hate the invader and drive him out of Africa, but it is very difficult for an American Negro to do this. He obviously can't do this to white people; there's no place to drive them. This is a country that belongs equally to us both. One has got to live together here or else there won't be any country.

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. . .the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. . . This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

In short, we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation- if we really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women. To create one nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task.

I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than colour?

Malcolm—the world's much more like me than it is like you. People recognize me. They see me in their mirror. But they don't hardly ever see you. You're not in the mirror with them.

Isn't love more important than colour?

I said before that America's effort to avoid the presence of black people constricts American literature. It creates a trap white writers find themselves in.

I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than color?

Não entendo por que o mundo é tão novo para os americanos", observou Giovanni. "Afinal, vocês todos são só imigrantes. E não saíram da Europa há tanto tempo assim.

one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not to attempt to destroy it root and branch.

I am what time, circumstance, and history have made of me, certainly, but i am also much more than that. So are we all.

I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty.

What it comes to is that if we, who can scarcely be considered a white nation, persist in thinking of ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, with the truly white nations, to sterility and decay, whereas if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements, and transform them. The price of this transformation is the unconditional freedom of the Negro;

America could have used in other ways the energy that both groups have expended in this conflict. America, of all the Western nations, has been best placed to prove the uselessness and the obsolescence of the concept of color.

I've never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the same of proud Puerto Ricans, who don't understand what's happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail.

people love different people in different ways—

In short, we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation—if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women. To create one nation has proven to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create tow, one black and one white.