Quotes About Race

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say, your professional poets, I mean there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

I think that, as a black girl, you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn't accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features or that you shouldn't have a voice or that you aren't smart.

I think one of my first jokes - in the black community, there's people who have jokes about skin tone. People like, 'You so black, you purple.' 'You so black, you gotta smile so we can see you at night.'

I taught myself to paint African-Americans, mostly people roughly my skin tone.

I'm Iranian, which means I feel that I have more right to take off other races and religions, being an 'ethnic' myself. But it's a mythical character, the Fonejacker, and it's all tongue in cheek.

I played Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron - four Prime Ministers. If Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister I would find it difficult that I would not be allowed to play him because of the colour of his skin.

Black people dance well because we start early - there's music being played everywhere. White people? They don't start dancing until they get to college, and by then, it's too late; the bottom don't move with the top no matter how hard they try.

Not too many people draw black people as well as I do.

I'm distraught as I look at my boys - two are African American and one is Caucasian - because too many people see them differently. None of them should have to think about how law enforcement will treat them if pulled over for rolling through a stop sign.

You have got to act on instinct; you've got to ride from your heart and let that performer come out. You can't over-think it too much because if you're thinking, the race is already over.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

I was born in the 1960s. I came up in the 1970s. I know how race relations were. The thing is, I want to advance the ball and never return to those days again. I want to keep the topic going. I'm going to discuss it. And we're going to make America better. It's my job as a citizen, and I demand it.

My family, friends and community members rarely spoke about race relations, or how people from different races have different experiences growing up in America. Race was a taboo topic.

I think one big thing with food and race that is a hot topic is cultural appropriation.

There's always opposition when you speak on topics like I'm speaking on. But I'm a black man in America. I grew up black in America. You can't tell me that what I've experienced and what I've seen is not true.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

This race is not about me trying to beat John Lewis. It is about carrying the torch and picking up the fight.

Most Asians I know still don't trust the Tories on race - and they have good reason not to.

We are teaching white children to hate themselves. We are teaching nonwhite children that it's OK to bully and torment white children because of the color of their skin.

I lived in London for a long time, and that's a pretty white town. In Toronto, I just ended up in this circle of indie rock kids who happened to be white, too... Really, it was just when I started getting out there and meeting more people and seeing more fans that I went, 'Oh, actually, I'm not white.'

White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency.

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of church and state - so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire, and no one had a concordance to explain why it was all happening at once.