Quotes About Race

People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage.

As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility - which I do.

Ben Crump is the most dangerous man in America.

Never mind what you've heard. Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was actually the 74th white one. And never mind all this talk about America electing its first black President; Barack Obama is actually the 44th white man to hold the job.

It actually was 'RuPaul's Best Friend Race' for me.

You have to think that if you're starting first instead of 31st you've got a better chance to win.

You know what Bill Cosby did wrong? He started criticizing young black men.

The issue of race is not an issue of choice. It's an issue of birth.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

Black athletes are always under more scrutiny.

I'm not black myself, but my sons are.

Do you have any idea what Ali meant to black people? He was the leader of a nation, the leader of Black America. As a young black, at times I was ashamed of my color; I was ashamed of my hair. And Ali made me proud.

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.

College was where I got to actually experience the difference between black and white.

The idea that a person can be both black and white - and at the same time neither - is novel in America.

My life was very compartmentalized. I went to a school that was all white, and then I went home and to my black family.

Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they're very different approaches.

Children with no father at home are between four and five times more likely to be poor as the children of married parents, whether they are black or white.

I try to emulate the Lynn Swanns, and the John Jeffersons and the fact they're black or white has nothing to do with it.

I think that unlearning race for black people is more along the lines of seriously saying blackness isn't real, race isn't real.

Of course, it's fun to play with Blacks.

When things aren't going well for black people, they blame the government. When things aren't going well for white people, they can't blame the government because the government is supposed to be for them. So they blame black people.

My hair is an untidy bob. I am very dark, but I embellish the roots because I am white in one clump.

I've never tried to run away from my race. I was born a black man. You know that in your bones as soon as you are able to understand this country... My approach to life about race is, I don't see the difference between black people and white people.