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Racism Quotes

Browse 3161 quotes about Racism.

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Racism Quotes

“That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserved of their scorn.”

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Book:Dreams From My Father
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“I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.”

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Book:The Help
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“I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.”

WorldLooksCultureBlackMorningStruggleDoubtGrewDrugDiseaseGrew UpRacismAddictionGravesTraditionalRecoveryGet UpNo DoubtUnconsciousEvery MorningPatriarchyAlcoholismDrug AddictionComplicityRelapse
Book:Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
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“Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned... Everything is war. Me say war. That until the're no longer 1st class and 2nd class citizens of any nation... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significa...nce than the color of his eyes, me say war. That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race me say war!”

MenHumansWarPhilosophyEyeNationsRaceClassRightsColorCitizensRacismSkinsRegardHuman RightsSuperiorsHis EyesAbandonedInferiorsAnti RacismBasic Human Rights
Author:Bob Marley
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“If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")”

IfsWantHumansRealEarthLife IsTurnsWaterCommunityAnimalEconomyAirSecurityCreaturesRacismSafetyPlantProsperityNeighborLocalsOppressionWorldlySincerelyHomelandGoodwillOur CommunityGood HealthPlants And Animals
Book:The Hidden Wound
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“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. (pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")”

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Book:The Hidden Wound
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“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

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Author:Audre Lorde
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“…“white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist control” over other black people.”

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Author:Bell Hooks
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“When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination (especially domination that involves coercive control), they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they wish to see eradicated.”

WayMayActionValuesBeliefWishWhiteSupportFailingRacismPrejudiceStructureEmbraceOppressionRacistDomination
Book:Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black
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“The struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.”

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Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
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“Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.”

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Author:Bell Hooks
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“Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.”

WayFeelsLooksHeartSourceRacismTerrorismVarietyCurseBehaveBigotrySexismRight WayOur LoveHomophobiaXenophobiaHue
Book:Loud and Clear
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“What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”

WorldNeedsHateNationsBlackReligiousRaceHistoryMonthsDiversityRacismPrejudiceSocial JusticeAfrican AmericanVoidBiasWorld HistoryBlack HistoryRacism In AmericaUs HistorySelectedBlack History MonthAfrican American WomenRace In AmericaBlack History Month InspirationalBlack AmericaAfrican American HistoryBlack History InspirationalAfrican American LoveAfrican American InspirationalAfrican American History MonthBlack InspirationalBlack RacismInspirational HistoryReligious PrejudiceAfrican RaceBias And Prejudice
Book:Negro Makers of History
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“No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.”

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Book:Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

LastsNationsReadyPrideFoolProudRacismResourcesFaultsTeethMiserableFollyAnti WarNailsBe ProudInferiorityPatriotism And Nationalism
Book:Parerga and Paralipomena: A Collection of Philosophical Essays
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“The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.”

KnowsMenLifeNeedsCountryUseBodyAbleSportsBlackRoomsHeroRacismEthicsGainsBlueTablesDollarsShoesDetermineCollectivesFortyEggsLaughedAppreciatedGhettoIngenuityRobinsCrumbsCadillacsJanitorI Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Book:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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“Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity, from racism, from whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn’t just race that was a social construct. So was I.”

SocialMy OwnRaceIdentityRacismAspectEmploymentNarrativeConstructsWombMy FriendshipWhitenessRacial Identity
Book:White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
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“Being vegan is easy. Are there social pressures that encourage you to continue to eat, wear, and use animal products? Of course there are. But in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and ableist society, there are social pressures to participate and engage in sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism. At some point, you have to decide who you are and what matters morally to you. And once you decide that you regard victimizing vulnerable nonhumans is not morally acceptable, it is easy to go and stay vegan”

MatterUseCoursesSocialEasyAnimalProductsRacismPressureRegardWho You AreVulnerableRacistSexismVegetarianVeganAcceptableWhat MattersVeganismHomophobiaHomophobicAbolitionistSocial PressureFrancione
Author:Gary L. Francione
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“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.”

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Author:James A. Baldwin
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