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Racism Quotes

Browse 3161 quotes about Racism.

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Racism Quotes

“I envision a valley, beyond red and blue, beyond flags and barbwires, beyond capitols and churches, where our descendants will sit together around a campfire and tell each other stories of the olden days - "remember when our ancestors used to live in tribes - they called it religion, nation, race and all that - how silly right!" I work towards that future.”

DiversityRacismPrejudiceEqualityOnenessSexismInclusionOne HumanitySystemic RacismTribalism
Book:The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America
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“I've come to realize that a fear of accountability is why white people say things like 'I don't see color' and 'Why does everything have to be about race?' Because to see my color, to see my culture, to see my race, would also mean taking responsibility for how white people have historically treated people my color, with my culture, from my race.”

DiversityRacismPrejudiceYoung AdultFrederick Joseph
Book:The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
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“It's not an easy thing, being the Black Friend. And it's certainly not a role every Black person should be expected to take on. But those of us who choose to play that role do so because we know that by helping our white friends become better people, we help make the world a little bit better for the rest of us.”

DiversityRacismPrejudiceYoung AdultFrederick Joseph
Book:The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
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“And so being a Negro in America is not a comfortable existence. It means being a part of the company of the bruised, the battered, the scarred and the defeated. Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan. Being a Negro in America means listening to suburban politicians talk eloquently against open housing while arguing in the same breath that they are not racists. It means being harried by day and haunted by night by a nagging sense of nobodyness and constantly fighting to be saved from the poison of bitterness. It means the ache and anguish of living in so many situations where hopes unborn have died. After 348 years racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame.”

PainRacismPrejudiceBitternessAfrican AmericansBlacksInequity
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community: not with role models and recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives of others. A good story lets you know people as individuals in all their particularity and conflict; and once you see someone as a person—flawed, complex, striving—you’ve reached beyond stereotype.”

StoriesLiteratureCommunityBooksEmpathyRacismPrejudiceCommunicateStereotypeMessageBanned Book
Author:Hazel Rochman
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“If you see suspicious behaviour from someone who you can more easily identify with, you are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt than those enacting the same behaviour but who you can not so easily identify with. This does not make you a bad person, it makes you a conditioned person. The quality of your character is, instead, measured by how you respond to that conditioning, both in the moment and in the rest of your life.”

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Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
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“The Anti-Fanaticism Sonnet Acceptance begets harmony, Reason begets solution. Solidarity conquers agony, Character conquers differentiation. Humility brings sanity, Forgiveness brings serenity. Patience breeds tenacity, Conscience breeds sanctity. Observation causes insight, Questions cause evolution. Self-correction facilitates might, Self-reliance facilitates ascension. So wake up and trample all fanaticism, Only then we'll be free from sectarianism.”

CharacterPoetryAcceptanceRacismConsciencePrejudiceSocial JusticeSonnetFanaticismSectarianism
Book:I Vicdansaadet Speaking: No Rest Till The World is Lifted
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“When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class. The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.”

AmericaClassRacismPrejudiceSouthAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesConfederacyAmerican South
Book:Black No More
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“What would be wicked would be to say, 'I will not give this person a job because he belongs to this category of people, and there's some kind of statistical tendency for this category of person to be different from that category...' Treat them as individuals! Look at the qualifications of this individual, and forget about the group, race, whatever you want to call it, to which he belongs.”

JobsScienceRaceClassRacismPrejudiceGenderDiscriminationSexismJob
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Never show fear. That meant that he could never back away from a challenge. Never. Whether in a cockpit or a barroom, the stocky Hispanic kid with the big smile took every confrontation as it arose. He got a reputation for it. The fear was always there, constantly, but he never let it show. And always there was that inner doubt. That feeling that somehow he didn't really belong here. They were allowing the chicano kid to pretend he was as smart as the white guys, allowing him to get through college on his little scholarship, allowing him to wear a flyboy uniform and play with the hotshot jet planes. But he really wasn't one of them. That was made abundantly clear to him in a thousand little ways, every day. He was a greaser, tolerated only as long as he stayed in the place they expected him to be. Don't try to climb too far; don't show off too much; above all, don't try to date anyone except "your own." Flying was different, though. Alone in a plane seven or eight miles up in the sky it was just him and God, the rest of the world far away, out of sight and out of mind. Then came the chance to win an astronaut's wings. He couldn't back away from the challenge. Again, the others made it clear that he was not welcome to the competition. But Tòmas entered anyway and won a slot in the astronaut training corps. "The benefits of affirmative action," one of other pilots jeered. Whatever he achieved, they always tried to take the joy out of it. Tòmas paid no outward attention, as usual; he kept his wounds hidden, his bleeding internal. Two years after he had won his astronaut's wings came the call for the Second Mars Expedition. Smiling his broadest, Tòmas applied. No fear. He kept his gritted teeth hidden from all the others, and won the position. "Big fuckin' deal," said his buddies. "You'll be second fiddle to some Russian broad." Tòmas shrugged and nodded. "Yeah," he admitted. "I guess I'll have to take orders from everybody." To himself he added, But I'll be on Mars, shitheads, while you're still down here.”

RacismEmpowermentPrejudiceObstaclesChicano
Book:Mount Olympus
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“People still get shot because of their color - people still get mistrusted because of their religion - people still get sneered at because of their gender and sexuality. Does this look like a civilized world? We may have the tangible brain capacity to build a civilized world, but we are not there yet, and we are not going to reach that destination any time soon. However, the work must begin now.”

AcceptanceRacismPrejudiceBlack Lives MatterGender EqualityHate CrimeHomophobiaReligious HarmonySystemic RacismIslamophobia
Book:Servitude is Sanctitude
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