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Racism Quotes

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Racism Quotes

“Sometimes change comes not in the first round, but at the second, third or fourth. Change starts with one person questioning, challenging, speaking up and doing something to make a difference. We can each make a difference...because each of us is already part of the community where racism exists & thrives.”

“In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.”

“What surprises me is-even though discrimination against women and racial discrimination still exist, they have improved a lot, especially among artists. And just when I felt I could finally take a break, I encounter the age discrimination. I turned 72 and started noticing a drastic difference in people's attitudes. I started with racism and sexism in the beginning and fought them so hard and was finally ready to relax. Then, here comes ageism, and I feel like, "Give me a break!"”

“Everybody's a racist. It's the one human trait that makes us all exactly the same. Deep down, we only like people who are exactly like us. And it doesn't matter. White. Black. Red. Yellow. Purple, uh oh, the purple people, are the worst. Man. All prejudiced and birth marky. But, we've got to learn to get past our differences. I learned that at the museum of tolerance. After my dad beat the crap out of a guy over a parking spot.”

“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.”

“Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike”

“We are social beings who make communities with an urgency, and it is a stern charge to make us take refuge in the lonely world of oneself. ...Racism attempts to occlude our cosmopolitanism (of the songs in and out of our bones), and it often appropriates our mild forms of xenophobia into its own virulent project. Difference among peoples is something that we negotiate in our everyday interactions, asking questions and being better informed of our mutual realities. To transform difference into the body is an act of bad faith, a denial of our shared nakedness.”

“I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal subjectivity (we are all just people) that they think will make racism disappear. They have a deep emotional investment in the myth of sameness even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are and how they think.”