Quotes About Race

True confession: The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language.

Wondering why white people named girl babies things like Hope and Faith and Patience - names they could never live up to - and black mothers called their daughters Mercy, Deliverance, Salvation - crosses they'd always have to bear.

The workers are the saviors of society the redeemers of the race.

Not everyone is a graduate! You're already lucky, make the most out of it! All the best for a bright future ahead of you! May you emerge a winner in this rat race that life offers us! Happy Graduation!

Yeah, I love being famous. It's almost like being white, y'know?

Black people created their own stereotype. Now its hard for me to be a educated young black man without being labeled as 'acting white.'

The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.

Race, let's remember, is a social invention and a cultural identification, not a biological reality.

I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.

in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't. Funnily

As the Congressman rose, I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.

in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't. Funnily enough, I had never felt inferior because of my race during my foreign student days. I was foreign by definition and therefore was treated as a guest. But now, even though I was a card-carrying American with a driver's license, Social Security card, and resident alien permit, Violet still considered me as foreign, and

We threatened the sanctity and symmetry of a white and black America whose yin and yang racial politics left no room for any other color, particularly that of pathetic little yellow-skinned people pickpocketing the American purse.

And even if we are inscrutable, what does that make white people? Are white people ever referred to as inscrutable? No, you would say that a white person who is hard to read has a poker face, which has a positive connotation, a strategic one, suggesting a careful withholding of information, whereas we are just inscrutable because you white people believe that we always have something to hide

in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't.

the General, like myself, knew he must be patient with white people, who were easily scared by the nonwhite. Even with liberal white people, one could go only so far, and with average white people one could barely go anywhere.

Even with liberal white people, one could go only so far, and with average white people one could barely go anywhere.

The only thing the white men lack is something black.

The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others…. One feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two Souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois

The South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.