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Systemic Racism Quotes

Browse 199 quotes about Systemic Racism.

Systemic Racism Quotes

“World Domination (A Satirical Sonnet) White people's pain is pain, Everybody else's is just discomfort. That is why you peddle Hitler, As such a monster. You don't hate Hitler because, He wanted to dominate the world, You hate Hitler because he wanted, To dominate everybody, including the whites. The world is but heirloom to the whites, All other claims are null and void! Loot like a pommy, rebel like an insurrectionist, Trod on whoever, just not the fellow white! World domination is the ultimate white privilege. Threat to white welfare is the ultimate human rights infringement.”

FascismImperialismWhite SupremacyHate CrimeSystemic RacismWhite PrivilegeInsurrectionAbolish MonarchyBritish ColonialismHuman Rights Poetry
Book:Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission
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“Come close, be my buddy, then after a while call me nigga - it won't affect our friendship one bit. But out of the blue if you walk up to me as a complete stranger and call me that, then you only deepen the wounds caused by white oppressors throughout human history.”

Black Lives MatterBlack HistorySystemic RacismBlack History MonthRacial ProfilingBlack WritersNegroNiggaBlack Writer
Book:Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live
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“If the colored population of earth today mounted an uproar against the white colonizers, there wouldn't be any trace left of Europe and North America. Yet the thought never crossed our minds - you know why! Because vengeance is not in our nature, let alone invade other people's home and call it march of civilization. And if we the colored descendants of colored ancestors can choose not to hold you responsible for the atrocities of your white moronic ancestors, despite being subjected to the same kind of discrimination till this day, couldn't you at least foster the basic human dignity to recognize those atrocities of the past and do your best to make sure that they are never repeated again! Once and for all, couldn't we be human beings before we are colored and caucasians!”

RacismPrejudiceSlaveryDiscriminationBigotryColonialismWhite SupremacyXenophobiaSystemic RacismNeonazi
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with bigotry of all kinds, justifying all kinds of inequities by victim blaming; heightening exploitation and misplaced hate; spurring mass shootings, arms races, and demagogues who polarize nations, shutting down essential organs of democracy; and threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change. In the United States, the metastatic cancer has been spreading, contracting, and threatening to kill the American body as it nearly did before its birth, as it nearly did during its Civil War. But how many people stare inside the body of their nations' racial inequities, their neighborhoods' racial inequities, their occupations' racial inequities, their institutions' racial inequities, and flatly deny that their policies are racist? They flatly deny that racial inequity is a signpost of racist policy. They flatly deny the racist policy as they use racist ideas to justify the racial inequity. They flatly deny the cancer of racism as the cancer cells spread and literally threaten their own lives and the lives of the people and spaces and places they hold dear. The popular conception of denial--like the popular strategy of suasion--is suicidal.”

RacismDenialSystemic RacismInstitutional RacismAntiracismInequityRacist Policies
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“The system's acts are covert, just as the racist ideas of the people are implicit. I could not wrap my head around the system or precisely define it, but I knew the system was there, like the polluted air in our atmosphere, poisoning Black people to the benefit of White people. But what if the atmosphere of racism has been polluting most White people, too?”

RaceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSystemic RacismWhitesInstitutional Racism
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“I thought I had it all figured out. I thought of racism as an inanimate, immortal system, not as a living, recognizable, mortal disease of cancer cells that we could identify and treat and kill. I considered the system as essential to the United States and the Constitution. At times, I thought White people covertly operated the system, fixed it to benefit the total White community at the expense of the total Black community. The construct of covert institutional racism opens American eyes to racism and, ironically, closes them, too. Separating the overt individual from the covert institutional veils the specific policy choices that cause racial inequities, policies made by specific people. Covering up the specific policies and policymakers prevents us from identifying and replacing the specific policies and policy makers. We become unconscious to racist policymakers and policies as we lash out angrily at the abstract bogeyman of "the system.”

PolicyRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSystemic RacismWhitesInstitutional RacismRacist PoliciesPolicymakersRacist Policymakers
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“It is the public schools, however, which can be made, outside the homes, the greatest means of training decent self-respecting citizens. We have been so hotly engaged recently in discussing trade-schools and the higher education that the pitiable plight of the public-school system in the South has almost dropped from view. Of every five dollars spent for public education in the State of Georgia, the white schools get four dollars and the Negro one dollar; and even then the white public-school system, save in the cities, is bad and cries for reform. If this is true of the whites, what of the blacks? I am becoming more and more convinced, as I look upon the system of common-school training in the South, that the national government must soon step in and aid popular education in some way. To-day it has been only by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the thinking men of the South that the Negro’s share of the school fund has not been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States; and that movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?”

EducationKnowledgeRacismAfrican AmericansEquityBlacksSchoolsSystemic RacismPublic Schools
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“The American Sonnet On Mayflower we arrived filled with hope, Escaping persecution and atrocities. Upon landing we became the persecutor, And atrociously evicted communities. Apparently we were civilized people, Who wanted it all for ourselves. We snatched it all from the innocent natives, And gave reservations to help themselves. Even today we ignore these atrocities, And continue to perpetuate segregation. We may look civilized on the outside, Inside we are walking discrimination. We are the land of liberty but only in theory, It's time to walk the talk and embody the glory.”

AmericaAmerican HistoryUnited States Of AmericaAmerican CultureSonnetAmerican RevolutionAmericanSystemic RacismAmericanaLand Of Liberty
Book:Boldly Comes Justice: Sentient Not Silent
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“When you come down to the ground of humanity from your pedestal of intellect, then you realize that though white Americans received independence from British occupation on July 4th, 1776, it meant nothing as to the fate of the Black Americans, for they still continued to suffer as slaves officially until the declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863, and somewhat unofficially till Juneteenth, that is, June 19th, 1866. I say somewhat unofficially because, it ought to be clear to anybody with half a brain by now that, slavery didn’t actually end either with Emancipation Proclamation or on Juneteenth, it morphed into racism.”

RacismSlaveryAmerican HistoryBlack HistoryEmancipationAmericanSystemic RacismEmancipation ProclamationJuly 4thJuneteenth
Book:Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society
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“Reclaim The Planet (The Sonnet) Monsters spread their tentacles, Because the masters are asleep. Puny hyenas rule the world, When the tigers are asleep. Enough with pleading, to hell with decency! Monsters only understand the language of roar. When the predator comes to feast on your family, Will you happily make way for them to pleasure more? Doesn't the thought boil your blood – good, it should! It means that your backbone is still alive. Now turn all your attention on your every pore, Feel through your veins the surge of might. No more pleading, no more begging to be treated as humans! It's time for the humans to reclaim the planet from the inhumans!”

DiscriminationCivil RightsBigotryHate CrimeSystemic RacismHuman Rights ActivistHuman Rights ViolationHate SpeechHumanitarian PoemSocial Justice Poetry
Book:Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
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“Amantes Assemble Sonnet 99 Rise, revolt and roar out loud, No more pleading in front of prejudice! Breathe, burn and brave out loud, No more bearing in front of malice! Dream, dare and dance out loud, No more dangling as docile doormat! Heave, hold and help out loud, No more retreat in front of cold updraught! Fall, fix and forge out loud, No more settling as the forgotten figures! Grow, glow, and break out loud, No more groveling at the feet of bloodsuckers! Only antidote to oppression is civilian unsubmission. When the children go astray, it’s time for parental intervention.”

Civil RightsBigotryHate CrimeSystemic RacismHuman Rights ActivistHuman Rights ViolationHate SpeechAutocracyHumanitarian PoemSocial Justice Poetry
Book:Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
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“Sonnet of National Beauty Beauty and ugliness as we know them, Are the product of an ugly mind. Once we step across all pretenses, We learn how much we’ve been blind. The whitest places on planet earth, Happen to be the ugliest of all places. For what appears to be a fancy joint, Is filled with a bunch of suited savages. Nations of color have problems too, But they don't pretend to be advanced. When we claim to be a global leader, We must first practice inclusion on demand. Great is not the nation that appears fancy, But one which values people over diplomacy.”

PoliticsRacismNationalismInclusionDiplomacyWhite SupremacySonnetSystemic RacismNation BuildingNeonazis
Book:Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society
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“The First World War (Sonnet 1501) There are bigger villains than Adolf, But they are not deemed villain so long as they do white man no harm. Two world wars count for nothing, compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. You only hear of two world wars, not more, Because world history is actually white history. White welfare has always been default human welfare, Like today we humans deem animal welfare secondary. Even the world map as you know is one big lie, depicting an exaggerated size of the global north. Rather than arguing over the planethood of Pluto, How about you right the wrongs right here on earth! Endeavor as human and reclaim your humanhood, Work for actual human welfare, defying white denial. There never was a world war, there was only white war, The first world war has just begun, against violation.”

Social JusticeCivil RightsColonialismNaziWhite SupremacySystemic RacismWhite PrivilegeNeonazisWhite PeopleWorld War
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Such proposals may seem impractical and even incredible. But what is truly impractical and incredible is that America, with its enormous wealth, has allowed Watts to become what it is and that a commission empowered to study this explosive situation should come up with answers that boil down to voluntary actions by business and labor, new public relations campaigns for municipal agencies, and information-gathering for housing, fair employment, and welfare departments. The Watts manifesto is a response to realities that the McCone Report is barely beginning to grasp. Like the liberal consensus which it embodies and reflects, the commission's imagination and political intelligence appear paralyzed by the hard facts of Negro deprivation it has unearthed, and it lacks the political will to demand that the vast resources of contemporary America be used to build a genuinely great society that will finally put an end to these deprivations. And what is most impractical and incredible of all is that we may very well continue to teach impoverished, segregated, and ignored Negroes that the only way they can get the ear of America is to rise up in violence.”

RacismProtestRebellionAfrican AmericansSystemic RacismRiotsWatts RebellionWatts Riots
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“White fragility. Coined by Robin DiAngelo (a white American woman), this term suggests that whites are systemically (not necessarily individually) racist, but because this is largely unconscious, when challenged, whites often become very uncomfortable and defensive.”

Systemic RacismWhite Fragility
Book:Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice
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“Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas -- the best beaches -- by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards [...] were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently -- and the Governor never raised the matter again.”

New York CityTransportationPublic PolicySystemic RacismPublic TransitRobert Moses
Book:The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
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“Ain't Your Nigger (Sonnet to The Whites) Yes I am colored, But I ain't your nigger. I am your way to oneness, I am the humanitarian trigger. I am the trigger for revolution, Whenever there is oppression. I am the trigger for reason, Whenever there is dogmatization. I am the trigger for ascension, Whenever there is assumption. I am the trigger for assimilation, Whenever there is discrimination. On our shackled shoulders America was built. Yet how come we are still hated to the hilt!”

SlaveryWhite SupremacyBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryCivil Rights MovementSystemic RacismSocial Justice PoetryBlack Lives Matter PoemBlack Lives Matter ProtestsBlm Quotes
Book:Bulldozer on Duty
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“Every few months, white people trot out a new title in a series called Cops Keep Killing People. Each new release has the latest tragic scene on the cover. It sure seems to be the same book recycled over and over, but please don't form a judgment until you read all five hundred pages. Maybe this time the story will end differently and the cops will be the hero!”

MurderPoliceBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryPolice BrutalitySystemic RacismPolice StateRacial DiscriminationRacial ProfilingRacial Injustice
Book:How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People
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“Standing on a street corner in Manhattan two days after Diallo's murder, having just come from a meeting of concerned citizens to plan an organized response, I was so filled with frustration and sorrow that I turned to the woman beside me waiting for the light to change and asked 'What do you think about the cops shooting that man forty-one-times?' She looked startled, confused--could she not feel the palpable rage, pain, and fear that pulsed through the black veins of this city and other cities across the nation? 'I don't know. I have to wait until all the facts are in. I'm sure they had a reason,' she finally responded. Perhaps she saw the disgust and disappointment on my face. Stepping off the curb as the light turned green, she added, 'I mean, he must have done something.”

Police BrutalitySystemic RacismRacial Injustice
Book:Police Brutality: An Anthology
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“Pressuring, demanding, or encouraging forgiveness from Black survivors may be used as a method to avoid the realities of systemic racism and racial trauma and used as a substitution for enacting substantive social justice.”

ForgivenessSocial JusticeBlack Lives MatterForgiveness QuotesSystemic RacismRacial DiscriminationRacial InjusticeBlack Trauma QuotesRacial Trauma
Book:You Don't Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms
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“Systemic racism continues hard and strong, particularly against Indigenous people, Why else would we be one of only four countries in 2007 to vote against a United Nations Global Declaration of Indigenous Rights? We need to learn more. We need to do better. We are all woven together in the fabric of the Earth and over time we will all thrive or fail together.”

TimeFailureRacismThriveLearnUnited NationsTogethernessSystemic RacismInterconnectednessIndigenouspeoplesday2025
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“You see, for much of Britain, America is where racism happens, and Britain is then by definition not racist because, you know, 'it's not as racist as America.' This is a totally moot and rather idiotic point, as no two countries have the same systems of social control, thus no two countries in essence have the same racisms. While British liberals may praise all the Dr Kings in the world, this does not necessarily stop them from reproducing and/or administering the domestic racial hierarchy effectively.”

AmericaRaceBritainSocial ChangeBlack HistorySystemic RacismRacial Hierarchy
Book:Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire / Black Listed / Black and British: A Forgotten History
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“[Phone interview transcript between author Roorda & Vershawn A. Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, a book based on his Ph.D dissertation] Now the subtitle, Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, what does that cover? It covers the range of enactments in speech, in dress, in the way we behave, the way that we interact with other people. Basically, it is the range of enactments that black people have to go through to be successful in America. I call it the burden of racial performance that black people are required, not only by whites but by other blacks as well, to prove through their behaviors, their speech, and their actions the kind of black person that they are. Really, there are only two kinds you can be. In the words of comedian Chris Rock, you can either be a black person, which is a respectable, bourgeois, middle-class black person, or you can be a nigger. As Chris Rock says in his show, "I love black people, but I hate niggers." So . . . when a black person walks into a room, always in the other person's mind is the question "What kind of black person is this in front of me?" They are looking for clues in your speech, in your demeanor, in your behavior, and in everything that you do -- it is like they are hyperattentive to your ways of being in order to say, "Okay, this is a real black person. I can trust them. I'll let them work here. Or, nope: this is a nigger, look at the spelling of their name: Shaniqua or Daquandre." We get discriminated against based on our actions. So that is what the subtitle was trying to suggest in performing race. And in performing literacy, just what is the prescribed means for increasing our class status? A mind-set: "Okay, black people, you guys have no excuse. You can go to school and get an education like everybody else." I wanted to pay attention to the ways in which school perpetuated a structural racism through literacy, the way in which it sort of stigmatizes and oppresses blackness in a space where it claims it is opening up opportunities for black people.”

AdoptionSystemic RacismBeing BlackTransracial Adoption
Book:In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption
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“Esperanza Impossible Sonnet 1 Earth is but a bedlam, All the beings are loonies. We are so engrossed in prejudice, Integration feels like blasphemy. We still cannot live side by side, We want it all for ourselves. We won't even move a single inch, When it comes to our opinion and ways. Selfishness, thy name is Sapiens, Upon its norm we philosophize kindness. We invented fancy terms like altruism, Lest we're infected with common humanness. Humanity is too alive to be bound by ism. Dead things can be dogmatized, not expansion.”

PrejudiceHuman RightsIndifferenceDiversity And InclusionSystemic RacismCultural IntegrationReligious FundamentalismHumanitarian PoetryHate CrimesHumanist Poem
Book:Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence
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“With all our eyes, we don't see. With all our ears, we don't hear. With all our tongues, we don't speak. With all our limbs, we still disappear. We turn our eyes where we need to see, We shut our ears where we need to listen. We chain our tongue where we need a voice, We freeze our feet where we need movement. It's time to thaw the freeze, It's time to break the silence. It's time we hearken to cries, It's time we walk as guardians.”

Social JusticeInjusticeCompromiseIndifferenceIntoleranceHate CrimeSystemic RacismHuman Rights ViolationComplicityHumanitarian Poetry
Book:Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World
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