Quotes About Race

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer.

Black girls are punished, many times violently so, for questioning and challenging authority, which is something that is often celebrated and encouraged as a sign of intelligence and critical thinking in white boys.

Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with 'keeping it real' are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.

If you're from Virginia, then you know some white people from Poquoson don't like black people.

Massachusetts children cannot only lead the nation in test scores, they can be competitive with the best in the world. And the gap in achievement among races can virtually disappear.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.

The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.

I've been called a race traitor, prejudiced about white people. It's ridiculous... I have a really, really diverse crowd. Most comedy clubs appeal to white audiences. I have a very mixed crowd. I have a lot of visibility in the black audience.

The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism - the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success - actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.

I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism.

The Talented Tenth is alive and well today and visible in all arenas of prominence. 'That they may guide the mass away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their own and other races.' As they elevate themselves from the masses, they ensure their success and that of their fellow Talented Tenth friends.

We need to have a conversation about the fact that black faces are not as visible as they should be, that there is huge inequality everywhere in terms of race.

When I'm starting a race, I just completely narrow down my vision and focus on what's directly ahead of me.

Genius is that in which the soul of a race bums at its brightest, revealing and preserving its vision; works of art are great and significant in proportion to the clarity and fulness with which they incarnate this vision.

Race pride, socialist ideals, and a sincerity as exalted as that of Carlyle's visionaries coalesced in Asa Philip Randolph.

Something always told me I wasn't no rich white woman.

What God is doing is trying to help us see that there is a fight to be fought, a race to be run, something of eternal significance to be contended for. He's calling us to greater purpose, but he knows how easy it is to just eat a good meal, relax with a nice drink, and forget about the brevity of life on earth.

monde se tourne vers nous et dise : ces gens sont d'une race qui ne sait pas mourir... nous sommes un témoignage.

The race film had confirmed a dead heat. That was great. But even better, most of the New York press finally learned to spell my name correctly.

Everyone in America is a European—or the descendant of a European. We become Americans when we leave behind us all the ancient prejudices and manners of the Old World and when we accept new ones from the way of life in the New World. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into one race of man.

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw it being repeated over and over, the perpetual struggle of one race, or tribe, or creed, against another... each one thinking they were right, superior, morally justified, or chosen by God. Simon saw himself as normal, Laura as abnormal.

This book should be sent to the White House, and to our earnest Attorney General, and to everyone in this country able to read—which may, however, alas, be a most despairing statement. We love—the white Americans, I mean—the notion of the little woman behind the great man: perhaps one day, Louise Meriwether will give us her version of What Every Woman Knows.