Quotes About Race

Talking about racism with white people can make white people very uncomfortable, Black people very uncomfortable.

I've seen too many comments, too many stories from a fan, or first-time fans that have come to a race in years past and the first thing they say is, 'I seen the Confederate flag flying, it made me feel uncomfortable.'

A lot of problems that are going on aren't going to get better if we don't talk about it. Race is the biggest one. It's a very, very uncomfortable topic because the biggest part of America was founded on it.

The difference between blues, jazz, rock n' roll and rap is that rap stayed poor. Even the white rappers are poor. It's scarier to look at poor people; it makes everyone uncomfortable. Their pain is something that people would like to see swept under the rug.

Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it's not going to get better... people have to be made to feel uncomfortable, and especially white people, because we're comfortable. We still have no clue what being born white means.

So many white people don't want to talk about race; it's uncomfortable. Many reason that slavery happened more than a century ago, and people alive today had nothing to do with it. But the particulars of these stories, from slavery to segregation to civil rights and mass incarceration, are at the marrow of life in America today.

I did a paper on why is race so uncomfortable to discuss. Is it because you don't want to bring up bad history in America? You want to be conscious of whatever you say about that because it's a serious point.

Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious.

Trump started talking about bringing back stop-and-frisk, which was ruled unconstitutional. And as a black man, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. That you will basically pass laws to say that I can be profiled, and it is legal.

I have this rule. It's called 'Top Dog-Underdog:' Underdog gets to make fun of Top Dog, but Top Dog can't make fun of Underdog. But you know what? You get Top Dog, you get to be Top Dog. Congratulations! And that dynamic happens not just in race but in many different ways. It's like the male-female dynamic.

Donald Trump is clearly the underdog in this race. Just about every organized institution has thrown everything it has at him. And they won't stop until they get their wish, that Hillary Clinton will be sworn in on January 20, 2017.

I was born into the most amazing family an underdog could be born into, and I was born into the LGBTQ community. And what a beautiful community we are. The art, the music, the fashion, the brains, the fight, the survival skills, the diversity, male, female, non-binary, Gender Non Conforming, cis, trans, femme, and all races.

My sense of politics and justice was deeply shaped in adolescence by my involvement with the underground punk - rock scene, and though lots of social and political issues had come forth in my comics, it wasn't until my late 20s that I felt properly equipped to address certain issues of race, power, and violence in my work.

There are Black women who die while trying to give life to newborns because Black people are always overlooked, under-cared-for, underprivileged. It's been what it has been since the beginning of time. I know from my own experience dealing with the health-care system, having to spend so much money to go to the doctor and still be overlooked.

When people rely on surface appearances and false racial stereotypes, rather than in-depth knowledge of others at the level of the heart, mind and spirit, their ability to assess and understand people accurately is compromised.

You must understand as a kid of color in those days, the Harlem Globetrotters were like being movie stars.

The important thing to understand about eliminating racial preferences in college admissions is that doing so does not lower the number of minority college students, it just redistributes them to schools for which they are actually qualified, rather than catapulting them into academic environments where they will inevitably struggle.

Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

All kids of all races need to understand, not just about black history but their own history. It's something that will help you in the future, just in terms of moving on in life, understanding the things your ancestors had to go through.

As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

I'm a black man in the United States, and there's no two ways about that. I have a shared common experience with other black men, and through that, there's an automatic understanding.

Any smart executive understands that to find the best talent she has to explore new territory that lies beyond familiar geography. That applies not only to gender, but also to race, religion, background and age.

I don't think the mainstream media understands people of color are multidimensional. For some reason, there's an idea that only white people are relatable. I don't think it's necessarily racist. But it's odd, because the people who watch the most television are black women, so we should be represented in more ways.