Quotes About Racism

The task for each of us, White and of color, is to identify what our own sphere of influence is (however large or small) and to consider how it might be used to interrupt the cycle of racism.

Most of the White people I talk to either have not thought about their race and so don't feel anything, or have thought about it and felt guilt and shame. These feelings of guilty and shame are part of the hidden costs of racism.

In terms of intergroup relations, the myth of the model minority has served to pit Asian Americans against other groups targeted by racism. the accusing message of the dominant society to Blacks, Latinxs, and Native Americans is, 'They overcame discrimination—why can't you?' Of course...any group comparisons that don't take into account differential starting points are inherently flawed.

What if I make a mistake?' you may be thinking. 'Racism is a volatile issue, and I don't want to say or do the wrong thing.' In almost forty years of teaching and leading workshops about racism, I have made many mistakes. I have found that a sincere apology and a genuine desire to learn from one's mistakes is usually rewarded with forgiveness. If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted.

Regardless of your subject matter, there are ways to engage students in critical thinking about racism which are relevant to your discipline.

I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.

If you was white, should be all right,If you was brown, could stick around,But as you's black, whoa brother,Get back, get back, get back.

Scientifically speaking, there is tribalism and group bias, but there cannot be any such thing as racism. We are all one.

Even when they insult you they do it to your face. That's the only way they can let you know they're superior to you. They might die and leave you all their money, but somewhere in the fine print in that will they've got to let you know you were a good nigger but you're still a nigger.

Why should racism go away when we are not tackling it in the right way? We are influenced by what we see in the world and what we see in the world is certain people being considered more worthy than others - and we continue to see that.

If I'm racist, don't think I would have directed shows like 'The Parkers' and 'The Wayans Brothers' or worked 41 episodes with Victoria Rowell on 'Diagnosis: Murder.'

Yes, we have the judiciary, the Constitution, we're fighting racism on a daily basis, but these are all state efforts and are not the efforts of the individual. The individual has to commit to change, the individual has to look at the past and take accountability of the past; for the wound to heal we have to dress it together.

We've simply been putting Band-Aids on the wounds of racism. We haven't drilled down to the bone to get to its source.

I had a lot of racism growing up where I grew up. Bullied at school. It definitely encouraged me. It's like battle wounds - you come out the other side, and it just makes you tougher.

Our country comes from a centuries-long culture of dehumanizing black and brown bodies. So what role does racism play? A huge role. You can't downplay how deeply woven and embedded this is in our country.

The first time I saw the Rodney King video, I remember thinking, 'Wow, these cops just got 100 years in jail.' Obviously that didn't happen.

'The Birth of a Nation' occupies a view of the South not far from Scarlett O'Hara's in 'Gone With the Wind,' and modern audiences have to wrestle with that beloved movie's romanticizing of racism.

'The Turner Diaries' is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.

Oh no a nigger cat!

One of his black girlfriends did once persuade him to go on an anti-racist demonstration; and when the National Front yelled, Get back, Pakis! Chili, wearing a mink-coloured suit, had annoyed everyone by taking out his fat wallet, waving it at the racists and shouting, Get back to your council flats, paupers!

However much anodyne talk there is of one's kind , a society that is racist is a society that cannot accept itself, that hates part of itself so deeply that it cannot see, does not want to see - because of its spiritual and political nullity and inanition - how much people have in common with each other.

Totalitarian politics—far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist—use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value—the reality of class struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbors—have all but disappeared.

Historically speaking, racists have a worse record of patriotism than the representatives of all other international ideologies together, and they were the only ones who consistently denied the great principle upon which national organizations of peoples are built, the principle of equality and solidarity of all peoples guaranteed by the idea of mankind.

Hitlerism exercised its strong international and inter-European appeal during the thirties because racism, although a state doctrine only in Germany, had been a powerful trend in public opinion everywhere.