Quotes About Race

Anyone intent on moral clarity might want to find another book and, in fact, might not want to go anywhere near the enduring chasm of race in the United States.

Men talk of the Negro problem," said Frederick Douglass in one of his last public speeches, in 1893. "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution.

Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister," a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.

Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized

The new Constitution eliminates the ignorant Negro vote and places the control of our government where God Almighty intended it should be—with the Anglo-Saxon race," said the president of Alabama's constitutional convention. Among the tools of suppression were tests that asked

The guiding principle was the superiority of white, Protestant, native-born Americans over everyone else.

layers? "Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister," a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.

The black man that sympathized, worked and fought for this great country of ours during its threatened destruction is a thousand times better than the white man that sympathized, worked, plotted and fought against it

There's nothing wrong with promoting white supremacy, it was only race pride, he said. 'I cannot see anything anti-American in that

There's nothing wrong with promoting white supremacy, it was only race pride, he said. 'I cannot see anything anti-American in that.' He dismissed the numerous stories of violence as the work of 'a paper owned and controlled by a Jew.' and imposters trying to take down the invisible empire

the American Breeders Association, had nothing to do with horses; its eugenics committee was headed by a man who'd been president of Indiana University, and the first president of Stanford, David S. Jordan. He taught that the human race could be improved only by preventing the disabled or certain nonwhites from reproducing

The Negro is among us and the race should be encouraged to progress, but that path should never lead to social mingling," warned the Indianapolis Star in 1921.

I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds," Stephenson said. "I sold it on Americanism." These people knew what they'd signed up for: that oath before God could not have been more specific about the absolute superiority of one race and one religion and the inferiority of all others.

Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister", a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.

Sociologist Douglas Massey has shown that as racial segregation has diminished, class-based segregation has increased in America.

Hitler and Stalin both accepted a late-nineteenth-century Darwinistic modification: progress was possible, but only as a result of violent struggle between races or classes.

Frank claimed that law was meant to serve the race, and so what seemed good for the race was therefore the law. With arguments like this, German lawyers could convince themselves that laws and rules were there to serve their projects of conquest and destruction, rather than to hinder them.

Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's most important deputy, did not follow every twist of Hitler's thinking, but he grasped the conclusions: Ethics as such was the error; the only morality was fidelity to race.

Law had no purpose beyond the codification of a Führer's momentary intuitions about the good of his race.

In hotel rooms, I watched Russian television toy with the traumatic American history of race, suggesting that Barack Obama had been born in Africa. It struck me as odd that the American entertainer Donald Trump picked up the theme not long thereafter.

Adolf Hitler claimed that all that mattered was the struggle of the race, and that the elimination of Jews would restore nature's eternal balance. His Thousand-Year Reich lasted twelve years, and he committed suicide. A state does not endure because a leader mystifies a generation.

exploitation (normally tethered to class) and oppression (normally understood through gender, race, etc.)

South Carolina's history, punctuated by the sale of little children, might be read as a cautionary tale about how a self-centered ruling class could rely on racial prejudice in the service of unchecked capitalism and to the detriment of moral character.

Light skin gives me such privileges that my complaints are not worthy. I'm not "positive" enough. Not "black" enough. I'm not a "real" black person. Worst of all are the terrible choices - the possibility of losing connections to those I love, betraying them, those who have done terrible things but at the same time have had to survive within the context of racism. Whose side am I on?