Quotes About Race

Page 321: But after controlling for IQ, the picture reverses. The chance of entering a high-IQ occupation for a black with an IQ of 117 (which was the average IQ of all the people in these occupations in the NLSY sample) was twice the proportion of whites with the same IQ. Latinos with an IQ of 117 had more than a 50% higher chance of entering a high-IQ occupation than whites with the same IQ. This phenomenon applies across a wide range of occupations, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 20.

I'm white and I don't dance, but that doesn't mean I have all the answers.

Whiteness is not really a color at all, but a set of power relations.

European humanism usually meant that only Europeans were human.

on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made.

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today.

psychological, and moral implications it has had both for its contractors and its victims. By treating the present as a somehow neutral baseline, with its given configuration of wealth, property, social standing, and psychological willingness to sacrifice, the idealized social contract renders permanent the legacy of the Racial Contract.

But at the same time, I'm guilty, too. Guilty of playing this role. Letting it define me. Internalizing the role so completely that I've lost track of where reality starts and the performance begins. And letting that define how I see other people. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. Fetishizing Black people and their coolness. Romanticizing White women. Wishing I were a White man. Putting myself into this category.

He is asking to be treated like an American. A real american. Cuz honestly, when you think about American, what color do you see? white? black? We (the Chinese) have been here 200 years....the German, the Dutch, the Italian, they came here in the turn of century; they are Americans. Why doesn't this face ("yellow") register as American? Is it because we make the story too complicated?

Willis is] asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black? We've been here two hundred years. Why doesn't this face register as American?

He's asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black? We've been here two hundred years. The first Chinese came in 1815. Germans and Dutch and Irish and Italians who came at the turn of the twentieth century. They're Americans. (points at himself) Why doesn't this face register as American? Is it because we make the story too complicated?

He's asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black?

But the experience of Asians in America isn't just a scaled-back or dialed-down version of the Black experience. Instead of co-opting someone else's experience or consciousness, he must define his own.

He thinks he can't participate in this race dialogue, because Asians haven't been persecuted as much as Black people.

The reason no one will rent to them is the color of their skin, and although technically at this point in the story of America this reason for not renting to someone is illegal, the reality is, no one cares. The minor god of immigration has gotten Dorothy this far, but the real estate spirits have failed her. She and Wu rent in the only place they can go, which has the benefit of being a place they can afford. The Chinatown SRO.

The city belongs to the black man. The white man was a convenient target until there were no white men left in Detroit. What used to be black and white is now gray. Whites got the suburbs and everything else. The black machine's got the city and the black machine's at war with itself. The spoils go to the one who understands that.

In Detroit, we all talked the race game. It is a way of life.

Beauty has laws, and an appreciation of them is not possessed equally by all. The more primitive and ignorant a race, or class, the less it knows of true beauty. The Indian basket-maker wove beautiful things but they did not know it; give them the cheap and ugly productions of our greedy "market" and they like them better. They may unconsciously produce beauty, but they do not consciously select it.

Don't pat me on the back because I don't care that you're black, then get angry on other occasions, because I don't care that your're black!

If modern civilization should disappear today, but leave libraries untouched, survivors could open almost any book and perceive immediately that persons living south of the Sahara are called "Blacks." The term "Black Africa" would suffice to indicate the habitat of the Black race. Nothing similar is found in Egyptian texts. Whenever the Egyptians use the word "Black" (khem), it is to designate themselves or their country: Kemit, land of the Blacks.

If the African anthropologist made a point of examining European races "under the magnifying glass," he would be able to multiply them ad infinitum by grouping physiognomies into races and subraces as artificially as his European counterpart does with regard to Africa. He would, in turn, succeed in dissolving collective European reality into a fog of insignificant facts.

LORD, thank you for lessons that come from the people you have placed in my path and from your creation of an intricate, amazing world. I pray that I will listen to those who have your wisdom and that I will learn from them. I'm thankful that your desire is not for me to limp or stumble along my path but to run the race accurately and quickly as I seek your wisdom to guide me to the finish line.

why don't they call white-skinned people rice-ish?).

The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die—migrate or die.