Quotes About Prejudice

The attacks of September 11 were made possible, in part, by the fact that U.S. law enforcement had a bias that 'rich Saudis are safe Arabs.' Al Qaeda understood that bias and relied on it to operate freely in the United States for years, even when the terrorists were engaged in activities that the authorities considered suspicious.

The eradication of racial and religious prejudice in the United States - and in the rest of the world as well - is a long-term process.

I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this: that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American.

The idea of Jewish unity, of a plan, an organization, unfortunately exists only in the brains of Hitler and Streicher.

I think there is sort of a general universal perception of me, or someone who looks like me, as someone who is kind of menacing, dark or mysterious.

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'

It is ironic you could make an animated film about a dog that's a universal character, but God forbid it be a human being who is not a man.

I'm trying to convey to my audience that you really can't judge a book by its cover, and there's more to the universe than you can see with your eyes.

When I was growing up, our nation was partitioned: Blacks were segregated by law in the South and largely by custom in the North, though it, too, had segregation laws. Our best universities had quota systems. Many white communities had real estate covenants to keep nonwhites out.

When I first left university, I thought about going into the private sector. But I discovered when I went to interview that I could only have a career in the back office, or doing HR. The attitude was, 'My dear lady, you cannot possibly think about going on the board.'

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

In fact, it used to be a joke if you studied at a University.

If you look at the 9/11 highjackers, certainly they were educated, some even had university degrees, but nobody really checked their mothers, who were nearly all illiterate.

I've always felt I had to prove myself, and now it has become second nature. When I first went to university, I took lodgings with a woman who said, 'What are the chances of you staining my pans?' I said, 'I don't think I understand the question...' and she said, 'When you cook your curries.'

To be rejected on account of old age may or may not feel the same as being rejected on the basis of race or sex. But it is clearly unjust and dehumanizing, and the law should take it more seriously than it does.

The representation of women in hip-hop has long been so flagrantly unkind.

If you say to people, 'I'm off to Papa New Guinea,' you'll often get a bad reaction - usually from people who've never been there. There's this fear of the unknown. And 99% of the time, you end up surprised - it rekindles your faith in humanity.

This is why we have racism, really: because people are confronting the unknown, and they don't like that.

Both racism and homophobia come from a sense of the presumed and the unknown.

People learn racism through dialogue. Somebody tells them about it. So if you can learn it through dialogue, you can also unlearn it through dialogue.

It's a sad day in this country when you can't talk about law and order unless they want to call you a racist.

I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.

Some things you never really fully understand unless you are actually black and you experience how it feels when someone treats you differently based on your skin colour.

It's not just in Hollywood that women run the risk of being passed by once they reach 50. It happens in real life, too.