Quotes About Injustice

People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream.

When I was described by our playmates as being shit color, he was lauded for his velvet-black skin.

Because the white world demonstrated in every possible way that he, a black boy, had to live within the murdering boundaries of racial restrictions, I had raised him to believe that he had a say in the living of his life, and that barring accidents, he should have a say in the dying of his death.

Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain't nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That's all.

Did he insult you? I mean us, the race? Not directly. Like most white racists, he was paternalistic. I would have preferred he slap me than that he talk down upon me. Then I could retaliate in kind.

Black folks can't change cause white folks won't change.

Hell, if you're born black in the United States, you're suspect of being everything, except white, of course.

Baby, let me tell you what's going to happen. In a few years, there are going to be beautiful posters of Malcolm X, and his photographs will be everywhere. The same people who don't give a damn now will lie and say they always supported him.

Image letting some white woman rename you for her convenience.

Imagine letting some white woman rename you for her convenience.

Uncle Willie ordered us between licks to stop crying. I tried to, but Bailey refused to cooperate. Later he explained that when a person is beating you you should scream as loud as possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might come to your rescue.

Although there is nothing amusing about racial discrimination, the oppressed find funny things to say about it. The white folks are so prejudiced in my town, a colored person is not allowed to eat vanilla ice cream.

For a few seconds it was a tossup over whether I would laugh (imagine being named Hallelujah) or cry (imagine letting some white woman rename you for her convenience).

A lack of courage allows us to remain blinded to our own history and deaf to the cries of our past.

In that second I was wounded. My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge. A poor, uneducated servant in Africa was so secure he could ignore established White rudeness. No Black American I had ever known knew that security. Our tenure in the United States, though long and very hard-earned, was always so shaky, we had developed patience as a defense, but never as aggression.

We had cooked the food of a nation of racists, and despite the many opportunities, there were few stories of black servants poisoning white families. If that didn't show mercy, then I misunderstood the word.

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being called out of his name. It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

Whites were safely isolated from our concerns. When they chose, they could lift the racial curtain that separated us. They could indulge in sexual escapades, increase our families with mulatto bastards, make fortunes out of our music and eunuchs out of our men, then in seconds they could step away, and return unscarred to their pristine security.

My sin lies in not screaming loud

They could be making her sleep in a closet under the stairs!

All it took was one man, just one, to declare that something was not right, and others would follow.

Very little in life if fair, Susannah

What he brought out was a wooden gag they put in someone's mouth before doing something drastic, like cutting off a leg.

Surely it is counterproductive to expect sense from someone you are beating senseless.