Quotes About Race

It's no disgrace to be black, but it's often very inconvenient.

I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

but if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall.

My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States?

It is a difficult thing for a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because, generally, with the latter an additional and different light must be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite race.

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man. It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run through the narrow neck of this one funnel.

I felt leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race.

I noticed that among this class of colored men the word "nigger" was freely used in about the same sense as the word "fellow," and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men.

Through official news agencies, Japanese officials warned the population to avoid "unpleasant confrontations" and to act prudently, decorously, and with cooperation, "thereby displaying the true essence of the Yamato race." The

We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race.

Language is the un conscious or at least subconscious product of the group, the herd, the race, the nation. Literature is the product more or less conscious of the individual genius, using of course the tools made by the blind herd, but, after the manner of living organisms, shaping these tools even as he uses them.

Medea really does behave like a man in getting her revenge, instead of letting it go like the Chorus advises. And if every woman behaved like a man, then—well, I don't see how the human race would survive.

In the enchanted woodland wild, The Prince shall wed a Fairy child. Dragon, Human, and Fairy, Their union will be bound by three. And when these lovers intertwine, Three races in one child combine. Dragon, Fey, and Humankind, Bound in one bloodline.

Dreams from 1991 are becoming reality. We will build good relations between nations and people. We will strive towards mutual respect and equality of every individual, sex, race and national or any other minority.

In short, Europe's colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

While most black voters have consistently supported Democrats since the 1960s, it is the white liberals that have slowly withered away over the decades, leaving African Americans as the sole standard bearers for the left."8

Across the political spectrum, Americans assert that any form of white racial consciousness or solidarity is despicable. Whites, therefore, have tried to keep their end of the civil rights bargain. They have dismantled and condemned their own racial identity in the expectation that others will do the same.

Racial identity can be condemned, fought, ignored, or cultivated, but it is unrealistic for a society to pretend it does not exist.

A]s I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color, and my heart pounded with social anxiety. In going around a single block, I got stares. Mine was the only white face around, and for five minutes, five blocks from my home, I was a stranger in a strange land. . . .

The United States has poured more moral energy into improving race relations than into anything else in its history. And yet, in November 2008, race was still the American dilemma. The fact that it was still a dilemma despite so much effort fostered something like a yearning for miracles.

Black solidarity is so taken for granted in America that almost no one ever points out that what is entirely acceptable for blacks would be considered hopelessly racist if done by whites.

the Pew Hispanic Center found that the closer blacks lived to Hispanics and the more contact they had with them, the more they favored cutting immigration.

Blacks now demand special treatment as a matter of course. In its befuddled way, society is trying to do what is right. But to favor blacks systematically and then call this sorry charade "equal opportunity" is self-delusion of the worst kind.

When they are beyond the reach of the law, Americans revert to the patterns of segregation the law forbids. Why is this?