Quotes About Race

time proved that the persistent educational gap between black and white students was only indirectly traceable to segregation. Instead, the root of the problem appeared to be the substantial disparities in the resources provided to black students relative to white students. Many, including myself, decided that given the difficulty of integrating black and Latino students with their swiftly fleeing white counterparts, we should concentrate on desegregating the money.

Professor Kimberle Crenshaw saw the dilemma a dozen years ago, but concluded that as long as race consciousness thrives, blacks will have to rely on rights rhetoric to protect their interests.16 There are, though, limited options to those deemed the Other in making specific demands for inclusion and equality. Doing so in the quest for racial justice, though, means that "winning and losing have been part of the same experience.

The Court ignored his racial configuration and simply applied the "one drop" rule. If Plessy was white and ejected from a white railroad coach, the Court said he would have suffered an offense for which the law would have provided a remedy, but if he was not white, that is, possessing even one drop of black blood, he had not been denied any property because he was not entitled to the reputation of being a white man.

This renewed politics of otherness not only allowed entire categories of poor whites to develop a powerful sense of racial belonging, but also allowed entire categories of erstwhile nonwhite immigrants (the Irish are the most prominent example) to become white.

The danger with our commitment to the principle of racial equality is that it leads us to confuse tactics with principles. The principle of gaining equal educational opportunity for black children was and is right. But our difficulties came when we viewed racial balance and busing as the only means of achieving that goal.

Brown is the definitive example of the fate of civil rights policies that were sought with too little regard for either the variables of racial fortuity or the tremendous obstacles those we hoped to help were actually facing in their lives.

Beyond the ebb and flow of racial progress lies the still viable and widely accepted (though seldom expressed) belief that America is a white country in which blacks, particularly as a group, are not entitled to the concern, resources, or even empathy that would be extended to similarly situated whites.

Success for the black person requires effective functioning achieved with the knowledge that his or her work will not be recognized or rewarded to the same degree as a white person doing the same thing.

Work and sacrifice, as important as they are, have never been sufficient to gain blacks more than grudging acceptance as individuals. They seldom enjoy the presumption of regularity, the sense that they belong or are competent, which whites may take for granted.

My parents were typical of many who drilled into me at an early age that because you are black, you have to be twice as good to get half as much. Unspoken in that advice is that whites are presumed competent until they prove the contrary. Blacks are assumed to be mediocre and certainly no intellectual match for whites until their skills and accomplishments gain them an often-reluctant acceptance.

A few white children were friendly, but others were hostile or simply distant. Teachers unthinkingly added to both problems by physically separating black students in the classroom either for special instruction or in response to the black students' requests.

In ways so closely tied to an individual's sense of self that it may not be apparent, the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white can become a valuable asset that whites seek to protect.

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.

Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.

Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. This White waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right, I don't eat colored people, no way! Bring me a whole fried chicken."

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.

The rules of perception in show business were broken: if they're Black then it's a gang; if Italian it's the mob; but if they're Jewish then it's a coincidence and you should never speak about it. — Dave Chappelle (Never say never. — Dom Mascara) Contract negotiation is like braces: it sucks the entire time and then as soon as you get them off, you forget you ever had them. Richard Sherman

obviously someone will! The issue is rather, will the most sympathetic person get there first?

If someone had shown me a statement of Sawi grammar and asked me to guess the type of persons who developed it, I would have guessed a race of pedantic-philosopher types obsessed with fastidious concern for handling masses of detail efficiently.

Harry is a black man, and I'm a white man. We obviously come from different backgrounds, but we stand together on this stage as brothers. And as a brother, I must say these race riots are terrible. It's awful how stores are being looted. The burning, the rioting, the stealing. But if, God forbid, it does happen again—and I pray it doesn't—all I can say is, 'Harry, I could use a couch and a couple of end tables.

When Los Angeles was founded in 1781—as a city of angels—by a group of eleven families, it seemed to throw out a welcome mat to people of color. After all, of that founding group—forty-four men, women, and children—twenty-six were of African descent, black or "black Spaniards," as they were sometimes called.

My race is not a better race, it is simply a different race.

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.