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People Of Color Quotes

Browse 45 quotes about People Of Color.

People Of Color Quotes

“If you are what they call a "person of color," it seems your path will be beset with more challenges, setbacks, and villains than the rest. In addition to climate change, cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, and hypertension, this thing called racism--which some claim no longer exists--apparently also kills. Men of color, especially Black men and especially those who are poor, die younger than the rest.”

DeathPovertyDyingRacismIllnessPeople Of ColorDying Young
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“Once the aspirations and appetites of the world have been whetted by the marvels of Western technology and the self-image of a people awakened by religion, one cannot hope to keep people locked out of the earthly kingdom of wealth, health and happiness. Either they share in the blessings of the world or they organize to break down and overthrow those structures or governments which stand in the way of their goals. Former generations could not conceive of such luxury, but their children now take this vision and demand that it become a reality. And when they look around and see that the only people who do not share in the abundance of Western technology are colored people, it is an almost inescapable conclusion that their condition and their exploitation are somehow related to their color and the racism of the white Western world. This is a treacherous foundation for a world house. Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.”

WorldHappinessReligionWealthTechnologyRacismColonialismBlacksWhitesPeople Of Color
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“The reality is that most people of color learn early in America that we will have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and when we fail, no one will help us fall up. Immigrants, people of color, and women learn early that in order to make it in Amreeka you have to daft punk it through life. You have to do everything harder, better, faster, stronger, and smarter. Those are just the rules. The streets of Amreeka aren't paved with gold; they're paved with blood. As an immigrant, you'll take a beating but you'll be like Rick Ross and keep hustling. if Bob works eight hours a day, you work ten. If Samantha works late on Friday, then you work on Saturday. You go twenty feet just to get to ten feet.”

AmericaWomenHard WorkRacismInequalityImmigrantsEquityPeople Of Color
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“Take care of your brother, Lydia, and take care of yourself; be at all times guarded. And never forget that this country despises above all else this thing they call people of color, sees them not as people at all but as harbingers of a future it can’t control. I remember liking that moniker: of color. What a thing to be in a country so black and white.”

AmericaChangeFutureUsaControlUnited States Of AmericaCautionUsPeople Of ColorUnited Stats
Book:A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers
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“My mission with Rave Scout is to promote cultural inclusiveness and increase the visibility of marginalized talent and diversify the underground scene through and by producing digital immersive experiences. The ultimate aim is to motivate the community and the scene to experience and learn how to feel and passively accept their vulnerabilities and one another.”

InspirationalDiversityLgbtqArtistsDance MusicRacial JusticeInclusivityPeople Of ColorAuthority Magazine
Author:Salman Jaberi
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“The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton's, over to shoot guns in the field. "Why you crying girl?" Constantine asked me in the kitchen. I told her what the boy had called me, tears streaming down my face, "Well? Is you?" I blinked, paused my crying. "Is I what?" "Now you look a here, Eugenia" - because Constantine was the only one who'd occasionally follow Mama's rule. "Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?" "I don't know. I don't think so." I sobbed. Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, something we both knew meant 'Listen. Listen to me.' "Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision." Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. "You gone have to ask yourself, 'Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?' She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew what I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother's white child. All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”

SelfUglyPeople Of Color
Book:The Help
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“Shades of Brown (The Sonnet) There is no white skin, There is no black skin. All of us are shades of brown, If we can reason without stereotyping. Climate makes the difference in color, But not in character of the individual. Human character knows no geography, For a being of character is human above all. The idea of race is a myth most foul, Born of ignorance and narrowness. Now we live in a different time, That requires abolition of divisiveness. Discard those traditions and live as sapient. Let's build a world where color ain't relevant.”

CharacterPoetryAcceptanceInclusionSonnetStereotypesSystemic RacismSkin ColorPeople Of ColorColor Of Skin
Book:Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law
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“Because children of color are much more likely to be exposed to lead at a young age, it is devastating to think about what will happen to an entire generation of Flint children. What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years' time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.”

ChildrenWaterLeadMichiganPeople Of ColorFlintChild EndangermentFlint Water CrisisLead Poisoning
Book:The Undocumented Americans
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“Oona's mother resisted the notion that violence was happening, or that substantial violence was happening, and said that if there was violence it was because there were paid aggressors on the other side, saboteurs, and that they were trying to kill both our defenders and our people in general, and they were sometimes killing their own kind, to make us look bad, and also because some of their own kind supported us, and they killed them for that, and that the main point was separation, it was not that we were better than them, although we were better than them, how could you deny it, but that we needed our own places, where we could take care of our own, because our people were in trouble, so many of us in trouble, and the dark people could have their own places, and there they could do their own dark things, or whatever, and we would not stop them, but we would not participate in our own eradication, that had to end, and now there was no time to wait, now they were converting us, and lowering us, and that was a sign, a sign that if we did not act in this moment there would be no more moments left and we would be gone.”

ActionViolenceAggressionBlacksRace RelationsWhitesSabotagePeople Of Color
Book:The Last White Man
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“As a person of color in America, you need to fly to reach the hallowed gates of wealth and mainstream success while others can just walk. "Good" is not good enough. You have to be exceptional, especially when you don't have the legacy admissions, the generational wealth, the mentors who look like you and come from your communities, and an entire system that benefits one skin color and gender at the detriment of others.”

AmericaRacismBeing The BestEquityInstitutional RacismPeople Of ColorInequity
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“The Patriot Act vastly expanded our domestic security apparatus and allowed the government to surveil Americans under the guise of combating terrorism. Americans are historically fine with castrating their own civil liberties, because we'd rather feel safe than actually be free, especially when our illusory feelings of safety can come at the expense of people of color, immigrants, and Muslims--you know, "them.”

SecurityTerrorismImmigrantsSurveillanceCivil LibertiesAmericansPatriot ActMuslimsPeople Of ColorProfiling
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“There are many variables that have nothing to do with a person’s education, experience, or accomplishments that will significantly influence his or her standing for higher-level positions and opportunities for advancement.”

RacismDiscriminationCareerBlack WomenRace RelationsBusiness EthicsPeople Of ColorBipocBusiness CoachingWorkplace Behavior
Book:Access Denied: Addressing Workplace Disparities and Discrimination
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“Without access to mentors and organization sponsors who can provide much-needed advice, coaching, and counsel, many of us are not prepared for the real game that is being played. It is as if we are trying to play soccer on a baseball diamond.”

RacismDiscriminationCareerRace RelationsMentoringBusiness EthicsPeople Of ColorBipocBusiness CoachingWorkplace Behavior
Book:Access Denied: Addressing Workplace Disparities and Discrimination
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“Historically, whenever Black people and people of color made progress in America, the demons of white rage would rise with a fury to choke and wrestle this country back to 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It was inevitable that Obama's election would unleash and invigorate the same malevolent forces that had always existed and corrupted America's promise for the rest of us. I knew it. Many people of color knew it and lived it. Even Obama knew it.”

AmericaRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksObamaBacklashBarack ObamaPeople Of Color
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“We live in a society where race is one of the biggest indicators of your success in life. There are sizable racial divides in wealth, health, life expectancy, infant mortality, incarceration rates, and so much more. We cannot look at a society where racial inequality is so universal and longstanding and say, 'This is all the doing of a few individuals with hate in their hearts.' It just doesn't make sense.”

RacismBlack Lives MatterRace And Racism In AmericaBlmPeople Of Color
Book:So You Want to Talk About Race
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“...it is always a bit of a gut punch to realize that someone you have been sitting next to for months or even years secretly harbors view that deny your basic humanity as a black woman. No matter how many times it happens, I have yet to get used to it. ...I really really wanted this to be just a matter of misunderstanding. I really wanted this to be a case where he just didn't know how harmful everyday racism is, and once he did, he would change his mind...It seemed far more important to him that the white people who were spreading and upholding racism be spared the effects of being called racist, than sparing his black friend the effects of that racism. ...That was when I learned that this was not a friend I could take to about this really important part of my life. I couldn't be my full self around him, and he would never truly have my back. He was not safe. I wasn't angry, I was heartbroken.”

RacismBlack Lives MatterRace And Racism In AmericaBlmPeople Of Color
Book:So You Want to Talk About Race
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“First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminists before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called "foremothers" of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called "gender equality," it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea that women of colour all of a sudden realized "we are women," and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other "feminist" notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. The mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of color and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live.”

FeminismIndigenousIndigenous PeoplesFeministsFeminist TheoryPeople Of ColorWomen Of ColorIndigenous Feminism
Book:Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism
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“Proximity to Whiteness can help immigrants and people of color literally survive in this country. Your othering will be minimized, and if you're lucky, you can be spared from discrimination, profiling, and ending up on the wrong registries.”

SurvivalRacismDiscriminationImmigrantsWhitesWhitenessPeople Of ColorOthering
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“...lies...drive immigrants, and people of color...to change who we are in order to make us palatable, or at least tolerable, to white America. I didn't find freedom in assimilation because there is no freedom in racist ideas. Assimilation requires that the story we tell about the United States and about white people is an uplifting, inspiring, sugarcoated version of the facts, in which the whip, guns, and racist motives must remain hidden. But it was the truth about this country, the knowledge of its ugly dirty secrets, that set me free.”

ImmigrationAmerican HistoryMexicanAssimilationPocPeople Of Color
Book:You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
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“Latin not Lethal (The Sonnet) Yes I am latino and proud, That doesn't make me a thug. Yes I am brown in color and loud, That doesn't mean I'm a lethal bug. Some of us can't speak English, That doesn't make us second-rate. We care for family as much as you, In friendship we walk to the world's end. Savage imperialists walked on our corpses, While they snatched our lands and homes. Yet you call us illegal and dangerous, Showing no remorse or desire to atone! None of us can undo the past I know. Our kids may walk together, let's make sure.”

RacismLatinoSonnetHate CrimeIllegal ImmigrationLatin AmericanMexican AmericanPeople Of ColorLatinxHispanic American
Book:Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live
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“Labelling is no longer a liberating political act but a necessity in order to gain entrance into the academic industrial complex and other discussions and spaces. For example, if so called “radical” or “progressive” people don’t hear enough “buzz” words (like feminist, anti-oppression, anti-racist, social justice, etc.) in your introduction, then you are deemed unworthy and not knowledgeable enough to speak with authority on issues that you have lived experience with. The criteria for identifying as a feminist by academic institutions, peer reviewed journals, national bodies, conferences, and other knowledge gatekeepers is very exclusive. It is based on academic theory instead of based on lived experiences or values. Name-dropping is so elitist! You're not a "real" feminist unless you can quote, or have read the following white women: (insert Women's Studies 101 readings).”

RaceFeminismRacismFeministRadicalAcademyAcademiaFeminist TheoryPeople Of ColorWomen Of ColorRadical PoliticsAcademic Industrial Complex
Book:Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism
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“Once returned to his own home, Anders wondered whether the rifle actually made him safer, for he felt he was all alone, and it was better to be nonconfrontational than to stand up to trouble, and he imagined that somehow people were more likely to come for him if they found out he was armed, even though they would not find out, even though so many folks were armed, he just had this sense that it was essential not to be seen as a threat, for to be seen as a threat, as dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated.”

TroubleSafetyBlacksRiflesGunsThreatsPeople Of Color
Book:The Last White Man
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“Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things—erased, and yet without us—we are essential.”

CultureRaceSlaveryScifiFirst ContactPeople Of ColorFanboy
Author:Junot Díaz
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“Fair & Lovely cream sells like hotcakes all around South Asia, even though everyone knows it's bullshit and doesn't help make you either "fair" or "lovely." You can never wipe off the brown no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray, but, still, people aspire and hope maybe, one day, one bottle will contain a magical elixir that takes them to Whiteness.”

FairnessWhitesWhitenessPeople Of ColorAsiansSouth AsiansLight Skin
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“Whiteness, like herpes, lingers forever. If you travel across South Asia, for example, you'll look at all the ads promoting beauty products and ask yourself why everyone looks like a white person from New Jersey with a summer tan. In fact, beauty is still often measured by saaf rang, or clean skin color, which refers to "light skin tone." Fair & Lovely cream sells like hotcakes all around South Asia, even though everyone knows it's bullshit and doesn't help make you either "fair" or "lovely." You can never wipe off the brown no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray, but, still, people aspire and hope maybe, one day, one bottle will contain a magical elixir that takes them to Whiteness.”

WhitesSkin ColorPeople Of ColorAsiansSouth AsiansLight SkinFair Skin
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“In America, communities of color have always put our "economic anxieties" second to placate the economic anxieties of "real Americans" from the "Rust Belt." We just pray and hope they will do the right thing and vote for a qualified candidate who doesn't want to put babies in camps. Sometimes it works, and other times we get Trump. If we are to be honest with ourselves, the group that has historically always played identity politics is white voters, and the rest of us have been hijacked by their rage, fear, and anxiety. Theirs are the grievances of "regular Americans from the heartland." When we voice our concerns, we are "playing the race card," engaging in victimhood, not pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, abusing political correctness, and enforcing cancel culture and affirmative action.”

AmericaPoliticsRacismEconomicsAmericansDonald TrumpPeople Of ColorAnxietiesRace CardRust Belt
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“It's a scary world we live in when a person of color endorses a racist for president.”

HateRaceTrumpRacismHatredPrejudiceScaryDiscriminationBigotryRace RelationsRacism In AmericaRace And Racism In AmericaRacism QuotesDonald TrumpHate QuotesTrump Resistance MovementDiscrimination QuotesHatred QuotesPresident TrumpPeople Of ColorScary RealityBen CarsonDonald Trump QuotesDonald Trump PresidentPresident Donald TrumpPresident Trump QuotesPresident Donald Trump Quotes
Author:DaShanne Stokes
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