Quotes About Race

As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say… as long as he looks to white folks for approval… then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about.

If I could rap, that would be a sensation, but I can't, you see, I'm just a Caucasian.

Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids - and what do they all have in common? They're all lighter skinned. Do you think that's an accident?

Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.

It's different, it's weird to say, 'She's a white rapper or she can't do this because she's this color - this color does this thing. These are the boxes we have, this is what it is, don't try to change it.' And it's crazy to me because I'm just not from that world, so I can't really rock with it all the way.

There's a lot of other rappers that aren't what they claim to be, and they get a pass because they're black.

I notice, a lot of white rappers sometimes, they'll feel like they have to be, like, almost aggressive.

It's rare to see a person of colour in a lead role. It does matter to a lot of people.

Police use of deadly force is rare in America. You wouldn't know that by listening to some of the blowhards out there: the newspaper, the mainstream media, the race hustlers. They make it seem like this stuff happens several times a day. It's rare.

One reason that we have collectively plugged our ears against a decade of dismal revelations about Bill Cosby is that he made lots of Americans feel good about two things we rarely have reason to feel good about: race and gender.

I do think that I have a sensitivity to the depictions of maybe all minorities in literature. And I think that the experience of people who look like me is so rarely captured in big, mainstream American fiction that you tend to sort of empathize with any character of color who pops up.

I think that sometimes we put undue pressure on stories featuring people of color, and I hope we get to a point where it's not such a rarity to see a person of color be the hero of a story, so that it can just be a story and not have to carry so much weight.

Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows - and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere.

Crying white mothers are ratings gold.

It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.

I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.

Ray Bradbury is one who is contributing to the understanding of the imagination and the curiosity of the human race.

By the time I reached middle school, I fully identified myself not even as biracial but just as black.

Generations of black women have anxiously watched as our children walk out into a world set against them. We teach them how to respond to police and how to react to racist comments, knowing that these lessons are not guaranteed to protect our children.

Well, my favorite memory of a president was in 1984. I was in the grandstands at Daytona, and maybe I was 20 years old. So just sort of down in Daytona, having a good time for the 500 - or for the 400 in July. And Air Force One lands on the back straightaway. It was President Reagan.

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.

We were raised very colour blind. I had gone to school and to camp for so long with white people, I think I was like 15 years old before I realised I was black.

Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.

My father marched in Selma. My father was there in Alabama. That's where I was born. My birth certificate says 'colored.' It does not say I'm African-American or black. So for me, those are real realities that are not subject to opinion.