Quotes About Race

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 always felt culturally adrift as a child because I'm mixed race. I've had to deal with that since I was little. Who am I? What makeup do I have? What are the black and the white?

A black woman's handbook in this industry is, 'Whoa.' The chapter on 'Don't go there.' The chapter on 'How to say that nicely,' how to express that you don't like something so that you don't lose the opportunity - which is what we're doing all day long.

What you find in the theatre is that if you're good, no matter what color you are, the audience will buy that - whoever you are.

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.

You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people.

White people just don't want their slaves to be free. That's the whole thing.

Color does matter, even though people don't see it. I've lived it my whole life. It's just what I know.

The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England.

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 colored race saved to the noble women of New England and the middle States men on whom they lean today for security and safety. Many of my race, the representatives of these men on the field of battle, sleep in the countless graves of the South.

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

Every intelligent person whose life has been passed in a slaveholding State, and who has carefully observed the character and capacity of the African race, will see that a general and sudden emancipation would be absolute ruin to the Negroes, as well as to the white population.

The vast majority of murdered whites are murdered by other whites. That's why there's no national outrage when a white person is killed by a black person: it's not evidence of some underlying black violence problem directed against white people.

I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics, pure and simple.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn't say I lived in a ghetto; I'd say I lived in the 'hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

Most blacks want school vouchers, but most liberals vehemently oppose them. Why? Because what is good for teachers' unions is of more importance to the Left than what is good for blacks. Who, then, is racist? By their own admission, and by the policies they pursue, the answer is the people who call themselves progressive.

I was told by the general manager that a white player had received a higher raise than me. Because white people required more money to live than black people. That is why I wasn't going to get a raise.

I always think - when I get mad, and people say, 'Don't be the angry black woman' - it's like, well, why not? There's so much to be angry about.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?

The first thing I ever heard about Barack Obama was that he had a white mother and a black father. Interestingly, the person who informed me of this spoke only matter-of-factly, with no hint of the gossip's wicked delight.