Quotessence
Home / Topics / Race Relations Quotes

Race Relations Quotes

Browse 387 quotes about Race Relations.

Related topics

ThinkingAmericaWhiteBlackRacism

Race Relations Quotes

“Come to yo’ Grandma, honey. Set in her lap lak yo’ use tuh. Yo’ Nanny wouldn’t harm a hair uh yo’ head. She don’t want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it. Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”

FamilyInequalityGirlsYoung WomenAfrican AmericansRace Relations
Book:Their Eyes Were Watching God
Create image

“The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that fail to give them that.”

TruthPoliticsRaceEmotionHuman NatureAnalysisRace RelationsRace And Racism In AmericaHeroes And Villains
Book:Dismantling America
Create image

“It is time for all of us to tell each other the truth about who and what have brought the Negro to the condition of deprivation against which he struggles today. In human relations the truth is hard to come by, because most groups are deceived about themselves. Rationalization and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our individual and collective sins. But the day has passed for bland euphemisms. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” It would be neither true nor honest to say that the Negro’s status is what it is because he is innately inferior or because he is basically lazy and listless or because he has not sought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. To find the origins of the Negro problem we must turn to the white man’s problem.”

TruthFreedomRaceHonestyLiesAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhites
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Create image

“I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers, against my father’s wishes—he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions—in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites. Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society.”

RaceClassPovertyInjusticeAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsRacial InjusticeEconomic InjusticeEconomic Insecurity
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air. It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years. It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.”

CitiesPovertyRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsWhitesNeighborhoodsOvercrowding
Book:The Street
Create image

“Yet another tactic was offered the Negro. He was encouraged to seek unity with the millions of disadvantaged whites of the South, whose basic need for social change paralleled his own. Theoretically, this proposal held a measure of logic, for it is undeniable that great masses of southern whites exist in conditions scarcely better than those which afflict the Negro. But the rationale of this theory wilted under the heat of fact. The need for immediate change was more urgently felt and more bitterly realized by the Negro than by the exploited white. As individuals, the whites could better their situation without the barrier that society places in front of a man whose racial identification by color is inescapable. Moreover, the underprivileged southern whites saw the color that separated them from Negroes more clearly than they saw the circumstances that bound them together in mutual interest. Negroes were therefore forced to face the fact that, in the South, they must move without allies; and yet the coiled power of state force made such a prospect appear both futile and quixotic.”

PoorPovertyRacismSouthCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace Relations
Book:Why We Can't Wait
Create image

“I come from a land whose democracy from the very beginning has been tainted with race prejudice born of slavery, and whose richness has been poured through the narrow channels of greed into the hands of the few. I come to the Second International Writers Congress representing my country, America, but most especially the Negro peoples of America, and the poor peoples of America—because I am both a Negro and poor. And that combination of color and of poverty gives me the right then to speak for the most oppressed group in America, that group that has known so little of American democracy, the fifteen million Negroes who dwell within our borders. We are the people who have long known in actual practice the meaning of the word Fascism—for the American attitude towards us has always been one of economic and social discrimination: in many states of our country Negroes are not permitted to vote or to hold political office. In some sections freedom of movement is greatly hindered, especially if we happen to be sharecroppers on the cotton farms of the South. All over America we know what it is to be refused admittance to schools and colleges, to theatres and concert halls, to hotels and restaurants. We know Jim Crow cars, race riots, lynchings, we know the sorrows of the nine Scottsboro boys, innocent young Negroes imprisoned some six years now for a crime that even the trial judge declared them not guilty of having committed, and for which some of them have not yet come to trial. Yes, we Negroes in America do not have to be told what Fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.”

AmericaRacePovertyRacismDiscriminationFascismAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace Relations
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Oh, Lawd, I done forgot Harlem! Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in 135th Street--they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame. You know, downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson! Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem. Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing!”

RacePovertyRacismHungerAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsHarlemHotelsWaldorf Astoria
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“We Negroes of America are tired of a world divided superficially on the basis of blood and color, but in reality on the basis of poverty and power—the rich over the poor, no matter what their color. We Negroes of America are tired of a world in which it is possible for any group of people to say to another: "You have no right to happiness, or freedom, or the joy of life." We are tired of a world where forever we work for someone else and the profits are not ours. We are tired of a world where, when we raise our voices against oppression, we are immediately jailed, intimidated, beaten, sometimes lynched. Nicolás GuiIlén has been in prison in Cuba, Jacques Roumain, in Haiti, Angelo Herndon in the United States. Today a letter comes from the great Indian writer, Raj Anand, saying that he cannot be with us here in Paris because the British police in England have taken his passport from him. I say, we darker peoples of the earth are tired of a world in which things like that can happen.”

RacePovertyPowerRacismDiscriminationOppressionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace Relations
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Today, as in colonial Virginia, the wealthy and powerful maintain an unequal society with the complicity of white people who share color with them but class with almost everybody else.... Though my view of Bacon's Rebellion has changed over the years, I keep coming back to it. There's something vexingly American in the story, in the violence and in the hope--and in the lengths that the powerful will go to try to stop the most natural yearnings of all, for human connection and for freedom.”

AmericaWealthRaceClassPovertyUnited StatesInequalityDivisionRace RelationsBacon S Rebellion
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Create image

“The problem is everyone, even Black people, believes that Black poverty is the worst poverty in the world, and Black urban poverty, forget it, and all urban Blackness always scans as poverty, which means people only love us as fetish. No one is sentimental about poor Black people unless they're wise and country and you could put a photograph of them on a porch with a quilt behind them in a museum.”

RacePovertyRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsUrban LifeUrban PovertyBlack Poverty
Book:The Office of Historical Corrections
Create image

“My inspiration for writing music is like Don McLean did when he did "American Pie" or "Vincent". Lorraine Hansberry with "A Raisin in the Sun". Like Shakespeare when he does his thing, like deep stories, raw human needs. I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like, you've got the Vietnam War, and because you had reporters showing us pictures of the war at home, that's what made the war end, or that shit would have lasted longer. If no one knew what was going on we would have thought they were just dying valiantly in some beautiful way. But because we saw the horror, that's what made us stop the war. So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick. I've seen all of that-- the crack babies, what we had to go through, losing everything, being poor, and getting beat down. All of that. Being the person I am, I said no no no no. I'm changing this.”

BlackRaceMusicPovertyViolenceHip HopRapRace RelationsTupac2pacAfrican America
Book:Tupac: Resurrection 1971-1996
Create image

“Well, of course," Camilo said, and grinned back at JohnRolandJoseph and his long line of bought and paid for ancestors, as friendly and unselfconscious as though all her life she had been looking for men, black men, big black men--plantation bucks (stud) look at his thighs, look at that back, look at his dingle-dangle--as though all her life she had been looking for colored men to whom she was not married, to whom she would never be married because she was already married to a nice young white man, as though all her life she had told uniformed monkeys who pulled elevators in rundown colored hotels, in Harlem, that she couldn't find, had lost, misplaced, a gentleman of color named Williams.”

WomenRelationshipsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesAffairsBlack MenWhite Women
Book:The Narrows
Create image

“anyway, the whole world knows, european & non-european alike, the whole world knows that nobody loves the black woman like they love farrah fawcett-majors. the whole world dont turn out for a dead black woman like they did for marilyn monroe. (actually, the demise of josephine baker waz an international event, but she waz also a war hero)”

DeathWomenRaceRacismCelebrationBlack WomenAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsAfrican American Women
Author:Ntozake Shange
Create image

“Only a few days after my encounter with the police, two patrolmen tackled Alton Sterling onto a car, then pinned him down on the ground and shot him in the chest while he was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, seventy-five miles up the road in Baton Rouge. A day after that, Philando Castile was shot in the passenger seat of his car during a police traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend recorded the aftermath via Facebook Live. Then, the day after Castile was killed, five policemen were shot dead by a sniper in Dallas. It felt as if the world was subsumed by cascades of unceasing despair. I mourned for the family and friends of Sterling and Castille. I felt deep sympathy for the families of the policemen who died. I also felt a real fear that, as a result of what took place in Dallas, law enforcement would become more deeply entrenched in their biases against black men, leading to the possibility of even more violence. The stream of names of those who have been killed at the hands of the police feels endless, and I become overwhelmed when I consider all the names we do not know—all of those who lost their lives and had no camera there to capture it, nothing to corroborate police reports that named them as threats. Closed cases. I watch the collective mourning transpire across my social-media feeds. I watch as people declare that they cannot get out of bed, cannot bear to go to work, cannot function as a human being is meant to function. This sense of anxiety is something I have become unsettlingly accustomed to. The familiar knot in my stomach. The tightness in my chest. But becoming accustomed to something does not mean that it does not take a toll. Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot.”

GriefRaceDespairAnxietyRacismPoliceMourningSympathyBiasLaw EnforcementAfrican AmericansBlack Lives MatterRace RelationsPolicemenGunsWhitesShootings
Author:Clint Smith
Create image

“A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory, it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.”

EvilJusticeRaceNonviolenceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesNonviolent ResistanceMongtomery
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Create image

“They could not understand that there is some few people in the world who do good without being asked. It were a hot day, I were a little boy, and ice-cream cones are always good. And that man just looked at me and thought I would like one--which I did. That is one reason why I do not hate all white folks today because some white folks will do good without being asked or hauled up before the Supreme Court to have a law promulgated against them.”

RaceGoodnessAfrican AmericansGood DeedsIce CreamBlacksRace RelationsWhites
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.”

Self EsteemIdentityRacismRespectSelf RespectIndividualismRace RelationsAngstRacism In AmericaRace And Racism In AmericaSelf ActualizationRespectabilityIdentity CrisisRacism And CultureIdentity Confusion
Book:Go Tell It on the Mountain
Create image

“For the laborers as such, there is in these new captains of industry neither love nor hate, neither sympathy nor romance; it is a cold question of dollars and dividends. Under such a system all labor is bound to suffer. Even the white laborers are not yet intelligent, thrifty, and well trained enough to maintain themselves against the powerful inroads of organized capital. The results among them, even, are long hours of toil, low wages, child labor, and lack of protection against usury and cheating. But among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before, by the wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from slavery. With this training it is difficult for the freedman to learn to grasp the opportunities already opened to him, and the new opportunities are seldom given him, but go by favor to the whites.”

WorkCapitalismLaborAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhites
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
Create image

“In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear--fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the very visibility without which we also cannot truly live. Within this country where racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision, Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism. Even within the women’s movement, we have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our Blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson--that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.”

FearWomenRaceSilenceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace Relations
Book:The Cancer Journals
Create image

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.” “There must be something,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.”

GodReligionRaceSafetySlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhites
Book:James
Create image

“Often, learning to speak out about racism and calling other people out on their racist behaviors is relatively easy. What is harder, however, is learning to be accountable for our own behavior and being compassionate with other people when they make mistakes and missteps. It is easy to cancel people. It's far harder to be canceled and to make space for people who have caused harm to change their behavior.”

Being HumanRace RelationsDiversity And Inclusion
Book:Me and White Supremacy Book and Guided Journal Set
Create image

“Accountability and cancellation are not the same thing. ... Cancel culture does not leave space for people to make mistakes, disagree, change, and transform their behavior. It simply asks that they be canceled, as if they never existed. While canceling someone may feel good or may feel like a form of justice, it leaves us with an uncompassionate world where change can never happen. ... Accountability is not about blame, shame, or punishment, toward ourselves or others. It's about taking ownership of and responsibility for our actions and the impact of our actions and asking others to do the same for themselves too. ... Cancel culture cancels the person. Accountability culture asks the person to be accountable for their behaviors.”

Being HumanRace RelationsDiversity And Inclusion
Book:Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Create image

“Cancel culture uses bullying and personal attacks as a way to find justice. Accountability culture uses ownership and compassion as a way to find justice. It's not just that cancel culture is about being "mean" and accountability culture is about being "nice." Rather, it's that cancel culture asks us to treat each other as disposable, whereas accountability culture asks us to treat each other as redeemable. We do not need to practice antiracism by throwing ourselves or each other away. We can practice antiracism by calling out/in the harmful behaviors and then throwing ourselves and each other a life raft to find our way back to doing better.”

Being HumanRace RelationsDiversity And Inclusion
Book:Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Create image

“If origin defines race, then we are all Africans – we are all black.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismBlack HistoryRace RelationsLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image

“Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyCharacterTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceSentimentsHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismHumanity And SocietyBlack HistoryRace RelationsLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAmbitionsAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image

“In the biological sense, race does not exist.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyCharacterTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceSentimentsHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismHumanity And SocietyBlack HistoryRace RelationsLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAmbitionsAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image

“It is character that should be the sole measure of judgement in the society of thinking humanity, and nothing short of that would do.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyCharacterTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceSentimentsHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismHumanity And SocietyBlack HistoryRace RelationsCharacter BuildingLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAmbitionsAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image

“Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyCharacterTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceSentimentsHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismHumanity And SocietyBlack HistoryRace RelationsLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAmbitionsAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image

“If not as a true human, let me tell you as a Biologist, color of the skin does not define an individual’s intelligence – it does not define an individual’s ambitions - it does not define an individual’s dreams – and above all, it does not define an individual’s character.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyCharacterTruthRaceEvolutionWords Of WisdomRacismBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismHumanitarianAfrican AmericanHuman LifeHuman RaceSentimentsHumanistBlack PeopleAfricaHumanitarianismHumanity And SocietyBlack HistoryRace RelationsLove And KindnessRace And Racism In AmericaSocial PsychologyHumanismoAmbitionsAfricanHumanitarian CrisisRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial PrejudiceOrigin Of LifeOrigin Of SpeciesHumanitarian EffortsHumanitarian InterventionRacial InjusticeRacesRacial EqualityRace IssuesRacial IdentityHumanitariansHumanitarian ActivitiesRace Of LifeRacial SuperiorityOrigin Of Human Rights
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
Create image