Quotes About Prejudice

The United States has always been shadowed by practices that contradict our most cherished principles. The genocide of native peoples, slavery, racial apartheid, Japanese internment camps, and the subordination of women reveal that our basic creed that "all men are created equal" was a lie, at least in practice.

For Baldwin, even in his later work, the category of race all too often pulls us out of the places where the hard work of self-examination happens. It can easily become an illusion of safety, because so many questions are settled beforehand by the assumptions and stereotypes that come with our understanding of race.

in the end, we have to allow this "innocent" idea of white America to die. It is irredeemable, but that does not mean we are too.

the idea that in America white lives have always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions by

black people are essentially inferior, less human than white people, and therefore deserving of their particular station in American life.

Harry Golden, editor of The Carolina Israelite, suggested that the 'hoodlum element' might not have so shamed the town and the nation if several of the town's leading businessmen had personally escorted Miss Counts to school.

by black people who they believe don't belong in their space.

Some white people hate black people, and some white people love black people, some black people hate white people, and some black people love white people. So you see it's not an issue of black and white, it's an issue of Lovers and Haters.

My mom's messed up," his mom said. "The nuns messed her up. They made her think everything Indian was evil. And that includes you and me.

Suppose a boy steals an apple From the tray at the grocery store, And they all begin to call him a thief, The editor, minister, judge, and all the people – «A thief», «a thief», «a thief», wherever he goes. And he can't get work, and he can't get bread Without stealing it, why the boy will steal. It's the way people regard the theft of an apple That makes the boy what he is.

The whites that wanted to live like the blacks were as immoral as you could imagine. Ask any black and they will tell you that you haven't lived until you have been a nigger on a Saturday night.

That just goes to show, remarked Pearlie, that you must never judge a woman in a kimono or a bathing suit.

savages. Dirty savages.

Whereas for most whites racism is prejudice, for most people of color racism is systemic or institutionalized.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

he responds to prejudice by cultivating a prejudice of his own against those whom he feels are even lower in the American hierarchy than he is:

There may be more danger in prejudices which are apparently founded in logic than in those which are acknowledged as emotions. (p69)

One of the least admirable things about people," said the small gentleman, "is the way they are afraid of whatever they don't understand.

We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them.

Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination.

Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color.

Sexism is a social disease.

Judge not according to the appearance.

If gay and lesbian people are given civil rights, then everyone will want them!