Quotes About Race

They tried to explain to the missionaries that it was they who put Adam and Eve out of the village because they was naked. Their word for naked is white. But since they are covered by color they are not naked. They said anybody looking at a white person can tell naked, but black people can not be naked because they can not be white.

Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it. How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed? I never thought bout that.

White folks is a miracle of affliction, say Sofia.

The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.

Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don't seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? Ask Sofia, she say. But I don't have to ast Sofia. I know white people never listen to colored, period. If they do, they only listen long enough to be able. to tell you what to do.

Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them.

Now we are beginning to ask the crucial question. If it is natural to be black and red or brown or yellow and if it is beautiful to resist oppression and if it is gorgeous to be of color and walking around free, then where does the problem lie? Who are these people that kill our children in the night?

Young mothers traveling alone doted on him. He was helpful, modest, quick, and definitely knew his place—they could read this easily in his demeanor—because he, like so many colored men, had perfected the art of doing the most intimate things to and for white people without once appearing to look at them. It was an invaluable skill.

White folks is a miracle of affliction.

Because I know. Grown-up white men don't want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute.

But they know who Adam is from they own point of view. And for a whole lot longer time ago. And who that? Mr. ______ ast. The first man that was white. Not the first man. They say nobody so crazy they think they can say who was the first man. But everybody notice the first white man cause he was white.

They calls me yellow like yellow be my name They calls me yellow like yellow be my name But if yellow is a name Why ain't black the same Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game

so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That's why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb's wool. Lamb's wool is not straight, Celie. It isn't even curly.

Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it. How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed? (Walker 2000: 166)

God all white too, looking like some stout white man work at the bank.

Shug say, Wellsah, and I thought it was only whitefolks do freakish things like that.

They calls me yellow like yellow be my name, They calls me yellow like yellow be my name, But if yellow is a name Why ain't black the same, Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game.

The concept of entitlement is familiar jargon in discussions of race and class, and it is just as widespread in the realm of disability. It's the idea that we are acting as if someone owes us something rather than merely asking to be treated with the respect and human dignity we deserve. It is the belief that people of a certain status or apparent condition have no right to demand better because we should just be happy with whatever we get. We should be happy we have anything at all.

America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.

Humanity , n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.

Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids

The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?

Her inability to see my color—a quality that at first seemed so fetching in her, so exhilarating and optimistic—ultimately became a statement I could not accept: that my color wasn't important. It seemed she did not know me. It was unbearable.

Just because a horse can run, or train, does not mean that it can race. It might have the ability to run just as fast as everyone else - or faster - but it can't race, or won't race. There are plenty of horses working at Penn National or Finger Lakes, everyday, putting in workouts that are just as fast as the horses at Belmont. But they can't race; that's why they're at Finger Lakes.