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Racism In America Quotes

Browse 302 quotes about Racism In America.

Racism In America Quotes

“We still tiptoe around having an honest discussion about what it really means to exist while Black in this country. All lives can’t matter if Black lives don’t matter. Demanding equality and equity isn’t radicalism. This is realism. We make these demands because the Constitution isn’t an accurate reflection of Black life in this country. If liberty escapes few, it escapes all.”

Black And WhiteBlack Lives MatterRace RelationsRacism In AmericaRacism And CultureBlack Lives Matter Racism
Book:Black Lives, Lines, and Lyrics
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“At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how “presidential” the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the “presidential” silverback’s name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth.”

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Book:The Sellout
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“At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how “presidential” the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the “presidential” silverback’s name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth. Then she became disconsolate, crying and apologizing for having spoken her mind and my having been born. “Some of my best friends are monkeys,” she said accidentally. It was my turn to laugh. I understood where she was coming from. This whole city’s a Freudian slip of the tongue, a concrete hard-on for America’s deeds and misdeeds. Slavery? Manifest Destiny? Laverne & Shirley? Standing by idly while Germany tried to kill every Jew in Europe? Why some of my best friends are the Museum of African Art, the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of Women in the Arts. And furthermore, I’ll have you know, my sister’s daughter is married to an orangutan.”

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Book:The Sellout
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“Think of it in terms of men's and women's cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/ countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture. -- Judit Moschkovich - "--But I Know You, American Woman”

WomenFeminismRacismSexismRacism In AmericaStereotypesLatin AmericanMisconceptionsPower Imbalances
Book:This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
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“Nazis murdered Jews because Hitler told them that a global Jewish conspiracy was trying to exterminate white Germans and destroy Germany. Trump and his accomplices tell MAGA minions exactly the same lies about liberals.”

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Book:American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America
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“Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't.”

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Author:DaShanne Stokes
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“Susan’s and Jennifer’s job searches are likely made harder by the color of their skin. In the early 2000s, researchers in Chicago and Boston mailed out fake résumés to hundreds of employers, varying only the names of the applicants, but choosing names that would be seen as identifiably black or white. Strikingly, “Emily” and “Brendan” were 50 percent more likely to get called for an interview than “Lakisha” and “Jamal.” A few years later, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin conducted a similar study in Milwaukee, but with a unique twist. She recruited two black and two white actors (college students, posing as high school graduates) who were as similar as possible in every way. She sent these “job applicants” out in pairs, with virtually identical fake résumés, to apply for entry-level jobs. Her twist was to instruct one of the white and one of the black applicants to tell employers that they had a felony conviction and had just been released from prison the month before. Even the researcher was surprised by what she found: the white applicant with a felony conviction was more likely to get a positive response from a prospective employer than the black applicant with no criminal record. When the study was replicated in New York City a few years later, she and her colleagues saw similar results for Latino applicants relative to whites.”

DiscriminationRacism In AmericaWhite PrivilegeRacial Discrimination20152004EeocLabor Markets
Book:$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
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“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”

Social JusticeWhite SupremacyRacism In AmericaRacism QuotesWhite PrivilegeRacial JusticeWhite People
Book:So You Want to Talk About Race
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“Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant. That’s like saying they were drunk. Or constipated. Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out, cutting his nuts off, the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do? Too constipated to do? And more to the point, how come Negroes, the craziest, most ignorant people in America, don’t get that crazy and that ignorant? No. White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome an unnatural enemy.” “What about the nice ones? Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.” “That just means there are one or two natural ones. But they haven’t been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn’t stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn’t stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on. So will we.”

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Book:Song Of Solomon
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“We see race as what people of color have (or are.) If people of color are not present, race is not present. Further, if people of color are not present, not only is race absent, so is that terrible thing: racism. Ironically, this positions racism as something people of color have and bring to whites, rather than a system which whites control and impose on people of color.”

RacismWhite SupremacyRacism In AmericaWhitenessWhite PrivilegeRacial Justice
Book:What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy
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“Act now, because people are dying now in this unjust system. How many lives have been ground up by racial prejudice and hate? How many opportunities have we already lost? Act and talk and learn and fuck up and learn some more and act again and do better. We have to do this all at once. We have to learn and fight at the same time. Because people have been waiting far too long for their chance to live as equals in this society.”

RacismWhite SupremacyRacism In AmericaWhite PrivilegeRacial JusticeWhite PeopleCall To Action
Book:So You Want to Talk About Race
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“If you'd combat bigotry, use honest language and call things out for what they really are.”

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Author:DaShanne Stokes
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“One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slave holder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave holder is patriotism á la carte.”

RacismSlaveryPatriotismRacism In AmericaReparationsSlavery In The United States
Book:We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
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“The only reason Kate had run afoul of the law was because she had shot a white man. The rules were different for them. They could shoot and kill almost anyone and suffer little to no consequences. Yet, if a black, Hispanic, Indian or anyone not white harmed them all the weight of the white judicial system came tumbling down on the heads of those criminals.” Excerpt From Peace Quiet and a Little Justice in the Territories Mark T. Sneed This material may be protected by copyright.”

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Book:Peace, Quiet and a Little Justice in a Lawless Territory
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“Several years after, he passed through our town and preached to his former congregation. In his afternoon sermon he addressed the colored people. 'My friends,' said he, 'it affords me great happiness to have an opportunity of speaking to you again. For two years I have been striving to do something for the colored people of my own parish; but nothing is yet accomplished. I have not even preached a sermon to them. Try to live according to the word of God, my friends. Your skin is darker than mine; but God judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their skins." This was strange doctrine from a southern pulpit. It was very offensive to slaveholders.”

Racism In AmericaSlavery In The United StatesJudge Not
Book:Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
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“As Jim Lawrence, a black labor activist at a GM plant in Dayton, Ohio, describes it, during the 1960s 'the union gave foremen a blank check to mistreat blacks and keep them out of the high-rate machine jobs and the skilled trades.'”

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Book:Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man: The Crockumentary Dissected―Camera Tricks, Spinning Statistics, and the Truth
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“We let it slide, turned our eyes inside-blind when you made our little sister cry burnt tears, blood, we let it slide when you held our brother by the throat until he choked out and died. We let it slide when we finally tried to make a sound but you had each other’s back and lied. We let it slide. Even now we let it slide.”

RacismPoliceBlack Lives MatterPolice BrutalityBrutalityRacism In AmericaPolice CorruptionGeorge FloydDefund The PoliceFuck The Police
Book:Bacchus Against the Wall
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“Changing the social order in one fell swoop, Henry Gerber wrote in 1940, is “like trying to push over a big stone wall with your skull.” It can’t be done. But “we can undermine the wall by little individual blasts and it will topple down by-and-by.” Or, as Del Shearer said in 1965, social revolution required at least “a century of subtle attack” on the dominant culture. As riots engulfed the United States in 1968, Frank Kameny saw similarities between homophiles and those Black Americans taking to the streets to express centuries of anger. “BUT,” Kameny said, “the Negro has truly explored and exhausted well-neigh, if not actually all, other avenues, and has gotten to the firm, unyielding stone wall of prejudice which blocks them. WE have run into this, but have not yet reached the end of all avenues.” Queer people soon hit the end of all avenues, crashing into an unyielding stone wall.”

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Book:We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride In The History of Queer Liberation
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“The reality is that racial lynchings were a frequent and normal feature of life in the South. This unique method of murder was a devastating form of terrorism that imposed a constant threat to all black people. The white authority structure did not only tolerate or encourage these killings but used the fear of lynchings to control and oppress black people.” --“Why White America Must Learn the History of Lynching”, Skeptical Inquirer (December 2020)”

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Author:Guy P. Harrison
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“The Wall is nothing more than a talking point Trump uses to trigger his racist and xenophobic base. MAGA minions have been brainwashed by Nazi propaganda techniques to see foreigners as evil monsters who want to exterminate white America, and Trump as their protector who was sent by God.”

Racism In AmericaNazismRacism QuotesNazisTrump QuotesQuotes About TrumpPropaganda QuotesXenophobia Quotes
Book:American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America
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“Dear poor white people, I have bad news for you: super rich white people are not your friends. They became super rich by exploiting people like you. That’s not what friends do.”

RacismWhite SupremacyRacism In AmericaFamous QuotesRacism QuotesKu Klux KlanKkkAlt Right QuotesRed State MentalityWhite Supremacy Quotes
Book:How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book
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