Quotes About Race

The images had been provided by movies, books and Pathe News, and none included a six-foot tall Black woman hovering either in the back or in the foreground.

Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, 'Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

Black people rarely forgave whites for being ragged, unkempt and uncaring. There was a saying which explained the disapproval: 'You been white all your life. Ain't got no further along than this? What ails you?

Her husband remains, in my memory, undefined. I lumped him with all the other white men that I had ever seen and tried not to see.

During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.

We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.

She was white, wore perfume and smiled openly with the Negro customers, so I knew she was sophisticated. Other people's sophistication tended to make me nervous and I stayed shy of Louise.

When I was described by our playmates as being shit color, he was lauded for his velvet-black skin.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Because the white world demonstrated in every possible way that he, a black boy, had to live within the murdering boundaries of racial restrictions, I had raised him to believe that he had a say in the living of his life, and that barring accidents, he should have a say in the dying of his death.

Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain't nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That's all.

Whether we were in the mines of South Africa, or the liberal New York theater, nothing changed. Whites wanted everything. They thought they deserved everything. That they wanted to possess all the materials of the earth was in itself disturbing, but that they also wanted to control the souls and the pride of people was inexplicable.

Did he insult you? I mean us, the race? Not directly. Like most white racists, he was paternalistic. I would have preferred he slap me than that he talk down upon me. Then I could retaliate in kind.

For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.

We have to go. Billie looked up from her drink and said, Speak for yourself. All I got to do is stay black and die.

Black folks can't change cause white folks won't change.

It wasn't wise to reveal one's real feelings to strangers. And nothing on earth was stranger to me than a friendly white woman.

Hell, if you're born black in the United States, you're suspect of being everything, except white, of course.

Ivonne said, You know white people are strange. I don't even know if they know why they do things. Ivonne had grown up in a small Mississippi town, and I, in a smaller town in Arkansas. Whites were as constant in our history as the seasons and as unfamiliar as affluence.

Whitefolks couldn't be people because their feet were too small, their skin too white and see-throughy, and they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did - they walked on their heels like horses.

I wondered what they could be laughing about. Whitefolks were so strange. Could they be talking about me?

Imagine letting some white woman rename you for her convenience.

I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.

I'll believe in Liberals' aid for us When I see a white man load a Black man's gun.