Quotes About Discrimination

We're criminalizing economic inability to stay out of the system. Women get penalized more than men for the same crime; blacks get penalized more than whites for the same crime. We need to bring out more into the light, because it's not fair... I applaud Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

We were taught in school, and I was taught at home and in church, that blacks and whites were equal and we should not discriminate based on skin color, even if my school was almost entirely white.

For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.

Ninety years after slavery, blacks were still segregated from whites. They still had separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms, separate neighborhoods, and separate schools. They still were expected to sit at the back of the bus.

No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side.

Sadly, whites are rarely open to what black and brown folks have to say regarding their ongoing experiences with racist mistreatment. And we are especially reluctant to discuss what that mistreatment means for us as whites: namely that we end up with more and better opportunities as the flipside of discrimination.

When I was born in 1959, the hospital in which I arrived had separate floors for black babies and white babies, and it was then illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states.

Hillbilly stereotypes have always made it easier for middle-class whites to presume that racism is the exclusive province of 'that kind' of person.

For black people who are really dark - and a lot of black people were averse to be dark skinned - it was believed that you'd be so dark that you couldn't see them at night unless they were smiling or you could see the whites of their eyes. At one time, it was a sharp comic barb that got levelled at some people.

I've never seen baseball advertise for a job, and I've never heard of whites applying for a job. I mean, there's an old boy network, and it's lily white.

Blatant hostility and racism toward whites is common among black youth.

One drop of black blood and you're black. That was the rule. That's what kept the wall between whites and blacks was this one drop rule. So I was raised with absolutely no ambiguity about that.

Only whites were allowed by law and practice to attend the University of Mississippi - a public institution supported by public dollars. Anything public and supported by public dollars is for me.

For much of its history, Virginia, the 'cradle of American democracy,' failed to live up to our ideals. All too often, our Commonwealth still treats whites by one set of standards and people of color by another.

I thought, 'Oh, acting is going to be great - I get to play different parts.' And then these auditions started coming up for terrorist, terrorist, terrorist, and I'm going, 'Whoa, what's this about?'

During the curfew, whoever went out, the people were watching you. Any Japanese home, there was some person figuring he's a good American citizen by doing his duty, and they were watching every move each family were doin'. Or if they went out, they followed them to see where they were goin'.

JACL has always been at the very forefront of making sure citizens' civil rights remain intact. They fight wholeheartedly against discrimination, prejudice and racial bias and they always provide a calm voice during turbulent times.

Why is our own participation in scapegoating so difficult to perceive and the participation of others so easy? To us, our fears and prejudices never appear as such because they determine our vision of people we despise, we fear, and against whom we discriminate.

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.

I never ceased to be surprised when southern whites, at their homes or clubs, told racial jokes and spoke so derogatorily of blacks while longtime servants, for whom they quite clearly had some affection, were well within earshot.

The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?