Best 1486 quotes in «racism quotes» category

If your house ain't in order, you ain't in order. It is so much easier to be out there than right here.

If you see a group of people struggling over generations and you attribute those struggles to bad character, then you do not truly believe we are all created equally.

If you think taking the master's tools away from the slave is a difficult task, try taking away the master.

If you thought taking the master's tools away from the slave is a difficult task, try taking away the master.

If you tolerate fear, you yourself will become distrustful. If you tolerate hate, you yourself will become dispiteful. If you tolerate arrogance, you yourself will become concietful. If you tolerate ignorance, you yourself will become disgraceful. If you promote tolerance, you yourself will become peaceful. If you promote harmony, you yourself will become joyful. If you promote love, you yourself will become powerful. If you promote world peace, you yourself will become impactful.

Ignorance harms. Love heals. Tolerance unites. Unity strengthens. Enmity harms. Harmony heals. Understanding unites. Peace strengthens. Racism harms. Solidarity heals. Diversity unites. Equality strengthens. Sexism harms. Fairness heals. Impartiality unites. Justice strengthens. Religiophobia harms. Open-mindedness heals. Mediation unites. Empathy strengthens. Political violence harms. Dialogue heals. Amnesty unites. Forgiveness strengthens. Tyranny harms. Freedom heals. Integrity unites. Democracy strengthens.

I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don’t have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel’s response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you.

I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself.

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.

I have been cheated out of being treated like a human being. In my reflection I saw an empty vessel. They had cheated me and I was desperate to make the sharp pain in my head stop.

I have met people who truly do not believe in God, and they feel no anger when they see suffering. They are indifferent to it. But you and I are angry. Anger is not indifference. I blamed God because He took my family. But I couldn’t get revenge from God, so I turned my rage against other people. I wanted revenge. Someone must pay.” “You’re wrong.” Helen said, wanting desperately to believe that he was. “I told you, I no longer believe in God.” “Then why are you so angry with Him?” His eyes were so sorrowful that Helen had to look away. She was unable to reply. “You blame me and my country for your losses Miss Kimball. And I blame you and your country. But you and I are people, not countries. Did you kill my wife? My child? Would you put a gun to their heads and shoot them, or take away all of their food and watch them die? No, of course not. Neither would I kill someone you loved if I met him face to face. Wars come from bitterness and hatred. They are started by nations without face. But wars end when the hatred ends in the hearts of people like you and me. That is why I ask you to please forgive me.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

I have the deepest respect for those who rise above the bigotry of their families.

I have the soul of a white man, the soul of a black man, the soul of an Asian man; the soul of every man.

I have to stress that my duties towards victims of all sorts, be it helping, taking their side, or caring, ends the moment their status becomes a bargaining chip. The moment the victim becomes a righteous sufferer. For in my short time on this planet, history and on-going affairs are full of those competing in victimhood.

I look down, worried something is showing after all, but if it wasn't for the incongruous absence of sensation on my left side, I wouldn't know. I look back up at her, taking a step closer because I kind of want to take a step back, and you can’t let that show. "What?" She tenses, even though I’m not even remotely close enough to, say, hit her. "I... I thought you were white." I snort, too relieved to take offense. "I'm adopted. Not my biggest problem at the moment." She smiles at me, looking a little relieved herself. "It just... it seemed a bit too... British, I guess." And it's then that I notice the slight twinge of her accent. “I am British. I was born here.” Her own skin is a light chocolate brown, light enough that it’s perfectly visible when she blushes. She looks so adorable that I almost resist, but not quite. “You have anything against Britishness?” I ask, coming to lean against the doorway on my good side, relieving the weight I have to put on the leg. “No!” she assures me. “No, it’s…” Her hands flutter nervously in front of her, like she hopes to pluck the words out of the air. “I just worry. Some people are weird about it. About me. Especially with the tutoring.

I know that no matter how liberal or progressive I profess to be, no matter how successfully, how diligently I seek to be enlightened and nuanced in my understanding of the world and those around me, I know that there still is a tiny, virulent nugget, a germ of prejudice that exists deep within me — the product of those stereotypes and awful jokes of childhood and adolescence, and that it must always be powerfully held at bay by reason, understanding and love.

I love analogies! Let’s have one. Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let’s say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can’t be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don’t even see it, because it’s always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don’t like it and they wish it would stop. Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that’s better, right? Kind of? Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won’t punch you in the face. Not even once, not even a little bit. Women and POC and LGBT and various combinations thereof flock to this place, and praise it to the skies. And then some white, straight, cis dude–one of the ones who’s on record as publicly disapproving of punching diners in the face, who has expressed the wish that it would stop (maybe even been very indignant on this topic in a blog post or two) says, “Sure, but it’s not anything really important or significant. It’s getting all blown out of proportion. The food is exactly the same! In fact, some of it is awfully retro. You’re just all relieved cause you’re not getting punched in the face, but it’s not really a significant development in this city’s culinary scene. Why couldn’t they have actually advanced the state of food preparation? Huh? Now that would have been worth getting excited about.” Think about that. Seriously, think. Let me tell you, being able to enjoy my delicious supper without being punched in the face is a pretty serious advancement. And only the folks who don’t get routinely assaulted when they try to eat could think otherwise.

I'm an Yoruba man born and raised in Ghana. Practically I'm a Ghanaian. But first and for most I'm a human being. And I have no prejudice about myself, I have no prejudice about people either. I'm free from all prejudices. I hate no one, I treat people equally. That being said, indeed, I know I can stand all people, and I can fit in any society.

I may be a famous writer but when white people clinch to their wallet and stare at me with scorn I need to ask my skin why.

I may not be able to change this world. But I am in control of my own world, where everyone who loves and accept diversity, in all forms, is welcome.

Imagine hating a complete stranger because their skin tone is lighter or darker than yours.

I’m dying twice as fast as any other American between eighteen and thirty-five This disturbs me, but I try not to show it in public.

I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division say, of men into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.

I missed what he said next, thinking how the villagers wanted the gypsies to be gross, so the grossness of what they're not acts as a stencil for what the villagers are.

I'm not white, no, but I'm just close enough that I could be, and just far enough that you know I'm not. I can check off a diversity box for you and I don't make you nervous - at least not on the surface. I'm the whole package!

I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion

I’m saying that sometimes we don’t want to see the ugliness in others because it means seeing what’s ugly in ourselves.

In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McKinney. On hearing his nomination, former associates and one officer came forward with charges of sexual coercion and misconduct. In 1998 he was acquitted of all charges after women spoke (of how they were being stigmatized, their careers stopped, and their characters questioned. A Congressional panel studied military investigative practices. In 1998, the Court of Appeals ruled against Dorothy Mackay. She had been outspoken on media and highly visible. There is an old Arabic saying “When the hen crows cut off her head.”“This court finds that Col. Milam and Lt. Col. Elmore were acting in the scope of their duties” in 1991-1992 when Capt. Mackey alleged they harassed, intimidated and assaulted her. A legislative remedy was asked for and she appealed to the Supreme Court. Of course the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1999, as it always has under the feres doctrine. Her case was cited to block the suit of one of the Aberdeen survivors as well!

In 1948, for example, when the effective minimum wage rate was much lower, and when racial prejudice was more widespread, marked, and virulent than today, white teenage unemployment in the U.S. was 10.2 percent, while black teenage unemployment was only 9.4 percent. Today [1979], in a much less discriminatory epoch, but where teenagers are “protected” by a more stringent minimum wage law, white youth unemployment is 13.9 percent, while black youth unemployment is an astounding and shameful 33.5 percent.

In American, the history of racism is taught like this: 'There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done.

I'm saying that I want to be in love, but sometimes I just don't want to be alone, and I don't want to do the work of balancing what that means in what hour of whatever darkness I'm sitting in.

I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion... Discriminating against individuals purely on the basis of a group to which they belong is, I am inclined to think, always evil. There is near-universal agreement today that the apartheid laws of South Africa were evil. Positive discrimination in favour of 'minority' students on American campuses can fairly, in my opinion, be attacked on the same grounds as apartheid. Both treat people as representative of groups rather than as individuals in their own right. Positive discrimination is sometimes justified as redressing centuries of injustice. But how can it be just to pay back a single individual today for the wrongs done by long-dead members of a plural group to which he belongs?

In addition, historical interpretations of this period in China have been shaped by Karl Marx's writings on this subject. Despite his anti-imperialist stance, Marx often uses racist expressions, such as "barbarous"and "hereditary stupidity," to describe Chinese culture and people.

In a deck of playing cards, the reds are as important as the blacks.

In America, the role of blacks, as for humans everywhere, is to live and flourish and to be fit progenitors for generations to come. To do so, they must oppose racism in an unrelenting way. Psychiatry for such warriors aims to keep them fit for the duty at hand and healthy enough to enjoy the victories that are certain to come.

In both cases, it is the prejudice, not the condition, that does the harm. It may be, as some would have it, that blacks are inherently inferior to whites or that homosexuals are all, by definition, sick. So what? Even if either condition truly is inherently undesirable, no manner of social pressure will turn blacks into whites or gays into straights. Social pressure will only exaggerate the handicap. It is still the prejudice, more than the condition, that does the harm.

In Detroit, we all talked the race game. It is a way of life.

Inequality is one of the pillars of the world economy.

...I never once believed what they wanted us to believe - that we as black people are inferior to whites...

I never see the color of a person. I never notice the color of their eyes. But the thing that always gets my attention. Is when the spout out lies

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the coloured peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals—and managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies').

In graduate school, early on, I once overheard a classmate talking in her office as I walked by. She didn't know I was there. She was gossiping about me to a group of our classmates & said I was the affirmative-action student...Rationally, I know it was absurd, but hearing how she & maybe others saw me hurt real bad...I stopped joking about being a slacker. I tripled the number of projects I was involved with. I was excellent most of the time. I fell short some of the time. I made sure I got good grades. I made sure my comprehensive exams were solid. I wrote conference proposals & had them accepted. I published. I designed an overly ambitious research project for my dissertation that kind of made me want to die. No matter what I did, I heard that girl, that girl who had accomplished a fraction of a fraction of what I had, telling a group of our peers I was the one who did not deserve to be in our program.

Initially, the purveyors of racism need no more than the silent acquiescence of the public ... [I]t is never too soon to confront bigotry and racism whenever, wherever, and in whatever form it raises its ugly head. It is incumbent upon all people to confront even the slightest hint of racist thought or action with zero tolerance.

In light of my distanced telescopic exposure to the mayhem, I refused to plagiarise others’ personal tragedies as my own. There is an authorship in misery that costs more than empathy. Often I’d found myself dumbstruck in failed attempts to simulate that particular unfamiliar dolour. After all, no one takes pleasure in being possessed by a wailing father collecting the decapitated head of his innocent six year old. Even on the hinge of a willing attempt at full empathy with those cursed with such catastrophes, one had to have a superhuman emotional powers. I could not, in any way, claim the ability to relate to those who have been forced to swallow the never-ending bitter and poisonous pills of our inherited misfortune. Yet that excruciating pain in my chest seemed to elicit a state of agony in me, even from far behind the telescope. It could have been my tribal gene amplified by the ripple effect of the falling, moving in me what was left of my humanity.

I no longer want to believe these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.

In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.

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.

In our own generation, as never before, there is need to demonstrate that Christianity is capable of bringing mankind into a truly universal society based not on fear and compulsion but on mutual love. To manifest the unitive power of Christian charity we must make faithful use of the means of unity which Christ has provided for His church. Among these the Eucharist holds a place of honor as the supreme source and symbol of Catholic unity.