Quotes About Race

Racial profiling has to stop.

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

As a social concept, 'white' is profound in its meaning. It means people who either come from or appear to come from Europe, but it's necessarily a construct of oppression.

When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?

The black community now in many ways divided itself the way the larger white community divides itself, over class issues. And that race is no longer the bond that it once was. That's one of the prices you pay for progress.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

I think it's really progressive to talk about race in relationships. I think there is so much room for that, and there needs to be more of it.

Behavior is individual and projecting an individual behavior upon an entire race is a version of racism. Put yourself in someone else's shoes: imagine what it would be like going thru life having this type of projection on you.

When I was growing up, white people made fun of me. So it was always strange to me as I would gain prominence in hip hop, white people kind of accepted me more and they would talk to me more. It's so weird to me, growing up, thinking about that in my life. It really is a complete change.

Not one black man is prominent in Brazil. The Negroes there are still at the bottom.

The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet.

The idea that the country should be led by white men goes back to antebellum slaveholders, who argued that the world was naturally divided between working drudges and elite leaders, who directed their workers and used the wealth the workers produced to promote progress.

A lot of white men in the music industry are promoting and participating in black culture in a way that is pretty careless. They want the currency of blackness, but they don't want the brunt that comes along with that.

The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.

Policy proposals to ensure the integrity of ballots are routinely presented by Democrats as not just racist but as having no function other than racism.

We are men, and propose to live like men in this free land, without the contamination of slave labor, or die like men, if need be, in asserting the rights of our race, our country, and our families.

The pros and cons of using the apron are likely above my pay grade, but with or without it, the Indy 500 is always going to be an exciting race to watch.

The prospect of being able to run a race behind closed doors is absolutely feasible.

There has to be a protagonist who has to overcome challenges, and there will be a race to finish.

Race is the true protagonist of the American novel. Our most popular classic fictions have known this, from 'Moby Dick' to 'Beloved;' all these books take on race or talk it out, often in other forms; they are less 'horror stories for boys' than ghost stories from a haunted conscience.

No issue is more personal or more important than protecting our health care. It's one of the most pressing concerns I hear about when I meet with Nevadans - no matter their age, race or income.

I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us, made it very clear what we were.

Historically, religion has often proved a more lethal and more divisive force than any secular ideology. It has also often been a more divisive force than race.